The Wells Fargo Cup is an award given to the top school in the conference that finishes with the highest average rank for all sports combined. There are eight teams in the conference that get ranked from best to worst in each sport and get points accordingly.

Wake Forest is slowly making improvements in its composite score. The Cougars finished in sixth place overall in the fall season of 2014 and rose to fifth in the fall season of 2015.

For the entire 2014-15 year, Wake Forest took sixth place in the standings.

With success this winter in wrestling (1st place), the school is hoping to make a jump in the rankings.

“Once sports are over, I predict that we will be pretty intact and in the middle of the pack. We have had success this winter in sports like wrestling that have helped our scores,” Athletic Director Michael Joyner said.

The cup shows how we compare to other schools around the conference.

“The Wells Fargo Cup is a measure of the health and strength of our overall athletic program. When we improve in standings, it means that overall our sports had more success in conference. That means that our goal is to maintain or steadily improve every year,” Assistant Athletic Director Geoff Belcher said.

According to Belcher some steps can help programs to contribute to our cup standings.

“Coaches who have been there a while definitely help because they built their program and have the chance to develop their players, as well as off-season workouts because in some sports we compete against year-round athletes, so anything we can do to further develop our players helps in our place in the conference,” Belcher said.

Looking ahead to the Fall 2017 season, we will be in a new conference.

Belcher said, “The goal now is to continue to improve in the cap-8, with the hope of eventually winning the cup in the new conference.”