PRINCETON, N.J. -- Penn’s
Nia Akins was announced as a Top 30 honoree for the 2020 NCAA Woman of the Year Award Thursday.
Akins, the first-ever Top 30 honoree from Penn, was selected from a record 605 school nominees—a group that was narrowed to 161 nominees by conference offices—and was picked as 1-of-10 representatives from NCAA Division I. The Top 30 honorees include 10 from each of the three NCAA divisions, all of whom have demonstrated excellence in academics, athletics, community service and leadership.
Since the establishment of the NCAA Woman of the Year program in 1991, the Ivy League has had 27 student-athletes recognized on the national level as state winners, Top 30 honorees or finalists—most recently Harvard's
Jing Leung in 2018.
Akins—a nursing and nutrition science major and a member of the Penn women’s cross country, women’s indoor track & field and women’s outdoor track & field teams—was a three-time Most Outstanding Track Performer of the Meet at the Ivy League Track & Field Championships. Akins was 1-of-3 finalists for the USTFCCCA National Women’s Track Athlete of the Year and 1-of-10 athletes on the Bowerman Award watch list recognizing the nation’s top collegiate track & field athlete. She was a member of the Sphinx Senior Society, the oldest and most prestigious honor society at Penn.
“The 30 honorees selected this year excelled in the classroom and in competition while also remaining committed to serving their peers and communities,” said
Suzette McQueen, chair of the Woman of the Year Selection Committee and senior associate commissioner for external relations and strategic marketing/senior woman administrator at the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association. “These outstanding women represent the thousands of diverse and talented women competing in college sports each year, and we’re proud to recognize their achievements on and off the field.”
With Akins’ recognition this year, all eight Ivies have now fostered at least one NCAA Woman of the Year national honoree: Dartmouth (8), Princeton (5), Brown (4), Harvard (3), Yale (3), Cornell (2), Columbia (1) and Penn (1).
Since the Top 30 structure was implemented in 2006, the Ivy League has produced a Top 30 recipient in 7-of-15 years, including three of the past four.
Akins' fellow Ivy League nominees for the 2020 NCAA Woman of the Year Award were Brown’s
Abby Carchio and
Zion Lewis, Columbia’s
Chichi Ikwuazom, Cornell’s
Taylor Knibb and
Micah Zandee-Hart, Harvard’s
Bente van Vlijmen, Princeton’s
Claire Thompson and Yale’s
Stephanie Higginson. Lewis and Akins were the Ivy League’s conference nominees that received Top 30 consideration.
The Woman of the Year Selection Committee, made up of representatives from the NCAA membership, will announce the nine finalists—including three representatives from each division—in mid-October. From those finalists, the members of the Committee on Women’s Athletics will select the 2020 Woman of the Year.