INDIANAPOLIS - Ben Click and Addie Bell have been selected as William Jewell's James R. Spalding Overall Sportsmanship Award for the 2024-25 season. While Southwest Baptist took home the overall honor, 30 student-athletes, one male and one female per school, are selected as their institution's winners, while 25 teams – one per sport, plus one tie– were previously recognized after learning of their honor during their respective All-Conference process.
 
Each institution – through the head coach – names one award honoree in each sport sponsored. These individual sport honorees became candidates for the individual James R. Spalding Sportsmanship Award. Each institution then selects one male and one female student-athlete from its season-long list of honorees to be named as James R. Spalding Sportsmanship Individual Award winners. 
 
Furthermore, during the initial nomination process, each institution's coach ranks the top-three teams within the sport that best displayed good sportsmanship throughout the season. The team with the highest point total is then named that sport's James R. Spalding Sportsmanship Team Award winner. At the conclusion of the academic year, the institution that accumulated the highest point total across all sports is named the James R. Spalding Sportsmanship Overall Award winner.

Click, a redshirt senior on the Cardinal baseball team appeared in more than 110 games with five Academic All-GLVC honors while majoring in nursing and healthcare management. On the other side, Bell earned her degree in psychological sciences in just three years while playing in over 150 games for the Jewell softball program and was a two-time CSC Academic All-District performer. 

Behind SBU's six team sportsmanship selections was Drury University with three for men's tennis, wrestling, and softball, University of Missouri-St. Louis scored three wins in men's golf, softball, and women's swimming and diving, Truman State University with three wins in women's soccer, women's tennis, and volleyball, and William Jewell College with three wins in men's basketball, football, and women's basketball. University of Indianapolis and Missouri S&T had two teams each with selections that included men's lacrosse and men's golf for Indianapolis and men's soccer and men's swimming for Missouri S&T. Lincoln University (baseball), Oklahoma Christian (women's bowling), and Quincy University (men's lacrosse) earned the other honors.
 
Among the notables for the sport winners, since the 2015-16 season, Truman women's soccer team picked up its league-best fifth selection this year, including the four in a row. Other multiple recipients included four-straight for Jewell men's and women's basketball. Lincoln picked up its first honor ever in the Blue Tigers' inaugural year as league members.

The GLVC renamed its annual sportsmanship award in 2016 after Spalding, who is referenced as one of the league's two "Founding Fathers" and for his longtime service at Bellarmine. Spalding was first a basketball student-athlete at Bellarmine, who later returned to serve his alma mater as assistant basketball coach (1957-66), head basketball coach (1966-71), men's cross country/track coach (1961-75), men's tennis coach (1961-62), and men's golf coach (1967-69), before being elevated to director of athletics (1971-94). During his tenure as AD, Spalding expanded Bellarmine's participation in intercollegiate sports from four to 16 teams and played a prominent role in both the formation of the GLVC and the sponsorship expansion of women's athletics within the league. Long revered as one of the league's pioneers, Spalding was inducted as a charter member of the GLVC Hall of Fame in 2001. He died in 2012 at the age of 79, following a lengthy illness.