Senior Robin Anderson of UCLA was named the Honda Sports Award winner 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”. With this honor, Anderson once again becomes a finalist for the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year and the prestigious 2015 Honda Cup, which will be presented on June 29th in a live nationally televised broadcast on CBS Sports Network at 6 pm PT/9 pm ET from Los Angeles, Calif.
Anderson, who won the award last season, was chosen by a vote of administrators from over 1,000 NCAA member schools. Finalists included Brooke Austin (Florida), Jamie Loeb (North Carolina) and Carol Zhao (Stanford).
"It goes without saying that I feel extremely fortunate to be able win this award for the second time," said Anderson, who is only the third player in school history to win the award multiple times, joining track & field star Jackie Joyner (1983 and '85) and softball's four-time winner Lisa Fernandez (1990-93). "You never set out to win these types of individual honors, but when you do it's always a great feeling because it proves that you and your teammates accomplished something special."
The senior from Matawan, N.J., won the Honda Sport Award last year as a junior and was part of the 2014 live broadcast. She is the top-ranked singles player in the country by the ITA which named her the 2015 ITA Senior of the Year and she earned the top-seed in the NCAA Singles Championship. A four-time ITA All-American, she is just the seventh player in school history to earn All-America honors every year of her career.
In addition, 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 Pac-12 first-team honoree. Most recently, she was named to the Pac-12 honorable mention tennis All-Academic squad.
"To be able to win such a prestigious honor like the Honda Award twice in your career is just an amazing accomplishment and I think a true testament to just how great a student-athlete Robin Anderson is," said UCLA head coach Stella Sampras Webster. "Players like Robin don't come along too often so, as a coach, I'm well aware at how fortunate we have been to have her in our program these last four years. Winning an NCAA title, playing in two NCAA finals and reaching the Final Four as a team every year, I don't think any of that happens without Robin on our team. She was the top recruit in the country when she signed with UCLA and I'm thrilled that she was able to finish her collegiate career right where she started as the No. 1-ranked player in America. She is without a doubt one of the greatest players ever to play at UCLA."
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.