ST. GEORGE, Utah-In the Dixie State athletic department’s final days as a member of the Pac-West Conference, Dixie State women’s soccer player Darian Murdock and men’s basketball player Brandon Simister have been named as the conference’s women’s and men’s scholar athletes of the year respectively.

Murdock becomes the second Dixie State student-athlete to claim the Pac-West’s year-end academic award, joining former DSU softball player Courtney Sherwin, who won the award during the 2013-14 season.

This past May, Murdock graduated with a 3.98 GPA in nursing and was also named as the Pac-West’s female athlete of the year and picked up her second-straight conference women’s scholar-athlete award earlier this week.

For the men, Simister is also the second Dixie State athlete to obtain this honor, joining former DSU basketball player Zach Robbins, in accomplishing this, as he did so in the 2014-15 season.

Simister is a first-team all-Pac West and second-team D2CCA all-West region selection this past season after finishing as Dixie State’s second-leading scorer at 15.1 points per game.