NATCHITOCHES – For her work on the court and in the classroom during the 2023-24 basketball season, Northwestern State’s Sharna Ayres was named to the Southland Conference All-Academic Team on Friday.

Ayres earned a spot on the conference’s second-team, the first postseason academic award of her career and the third for NSU in the past two seasons.

The sharpshooting left from Melbourne, Australia led the conference this past season in 3-point shooting with 74 conversions from beyond the arc, the most in a single season in the conference over the past four seasons and the sixth most in a single season at NSU.

She started every game for the Demons for the second straight season, playing an average of 31.0 minutes per game, and maintained a 3.67 grade point average while working on her master’s degree in sport administration in NSU’s college of health and human performance.

Ayres received her bachelor’s degree in psychology at NSU in May of 2023.

She was one of two players this season to average more than two made 3-pointers per game and had 15 games on the year where she made three or more shots from beyond the arc, nine of those coming in conference play.

She drained five in a game twice during league play, her season high, including as part of her career-high 24-point outing at HCU that helped clinch NSU’s spot in the Southland Conference Tournament.

Ayres turned in four double-doubles during the season as well that included a career-high 13 rebounds against Texas A&M-Commerce on Feb. 3 and a 12-point, 12-rebound performance, also against Commerce, in the SLC Tournament.

Ayres led the Demons in scoring at 11.1 points per game for the season and topped the team with 5.4 rebounds per game on the way to the first 300-point, 150-rebound season of her career.

Her 137 career 3-pointers ranks ninth at NSU, needing just 61 more made shots to enter the top five.

Ayres is a member of the SLC Commissioner’s Honor Roll and two-time member of NSU’s Honor Roll.