Robin Anderson of UCLA, Florida’s Brooke Austin, Jamie Loeb of North Carolina and Carol Zhao from Stanford are the four nominees for the Honda Sports Award for tennis as announced by Chris Voelz, Executive Director of THE Collegiate Women Sports Awards (CWSA) today.
The Honda Sports Award is presented annually by the CWSA to the top women athletes in 12 NCAA- sanctioned sports and signifies “the best of the best in collegiate athletics”. The winner of the sport award becomes a finalist for the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year and the prestigious 2015 Honda Cup. The nominees were chosen by a combination of NCAA Championship finish and national tennis rankings.
The Honda Sports award winner for tennis will be announced next week after voting by administrators from over 1,000 NCAA member schools. Each NCAA member institution has a vote.
Honda Sports award winners will be presented with the honor during on-campus presentations throughout the year and all Honda Sports award winners become a finalist for the prestigious 2015 Honda Cup award which will be presented on June 29, at 6 pm PT/9 pm ET, in a live televised broadcast on CBS Sports Network from L.A.
Anderson, a senior from Matawan, N.J., won the Honda Sport Award last year as a junior. She is the top-ranked singles player in the country by the ITA and earned the top-seed in the NCAA Championship. She is a four-time ITA All-American and was named the 2015 ITA Senior of the Year. She is UCLA’s first women’s tennis player to have earned back-to-back Pac-12 Player of the Year honors and was a four-time first-team honoree.
Hailing from Indianapolis, Ind., Austin was named the 2015 ITA Rookie of the Year and ranked fourth nationally by ITA in singles and third in doubles. She was the 2015 SEC Player and Freshman of the Year, the first Gator to receive both honors in the same season, and was a first-team All-SEC member and a SEC All-Tournament team honoree. She advanced to the semifinals in NCAA Doubles competition.
Loeb is the 2015 NCAA Singles champion. The sophomore from Ossining, N.Y., was a Honda Sport Award nominee for tennis last season as a rookie and is ranked third nationally in singles this year by the ITA. She is a two-time ITA All-American, a two-time ACC Player of the Year and a two-time ACC first-team All-Conference member. She posted a 20-3 mark in duals and finished her singles campaign at 31-5 overall.
Zhao is ranked second overall nationally in singles by the ITA and was the NCAA Singles runner-up. She was the No. 2 seed in both NCAA singles and doubles and was a member of the Pac-12 Doubles Team of the Year. The sophomore from Richmond Hill, Ontario is a two-time ITA All-American and a two-time first-team All-Pac-12 honoree. She posted a 35-5 overall record in singles and boasted a 15-match win streak during the season.
THE Collegiate Women Sports Awards has honored the nation’s top NCAA women athletes for 39 years, recognizing superior athletic skills, leadership, academic excellence and eagerness to participate in community service. Since commencing its sponsorship in 1986, Honda has provided more than $3.0 million in institutional grants to the universities of the award winners and nominees to support women’s athletics programs at the institutions.