GREENSBORO, N.C. (theACC.com) – Atlantic Coast Conference nominees Gabriela Leon (Louisville track & field) and Jaeda Daniel (NC State tennis) are among the Top 30 honorees for the 2022 NCAA Woman of the Year Award as announced by the NCAA on Thursday.
The NCAA Woman of the Year Award was established in 1991 to recognize graduating female student-athletes who have exhausted their eligibility and distinguished themselves in academics, athletics, service and leadership throughout their collegiate careers.
“We are extremely proud of Gabriela and Jaeda for being selected as Top 30 honorees for this year’s NCAA Woman of the Year Award, and they are each incredibly worth of this well-deserved recognition,” said ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips, Ph.D. “As a league, we are honored to have Gabriela and Jaeda represent the ACC and all the best in college athletics, excelling in the classroom, competition and their communities.”
Leon and Daniel were each among the top 10 honorees chosen from NCAA Division I conferences. Ten Division II and 10 Division III honorees were also announced on Thursday.
The selection committee will now determine the top three honorees from each division and announce the nine finalists. From those nine finalists, the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics will choose the 2022 NCAA Woman of the Year.
For the first time in the award’s history, the Top 30 honorees will be celebrated, and the Woman of the Year named, at the NCAA Convention. The 2023 Convention will take place in January in San Antonio.
Louisville’s Leon completed an outstanding collegiate career, highlighted by a banner 2022 outdoor season. The Grand Rapids, Michigan, native became the program’s first women’s track and field outdoor national champion when she cleared 4.60m (15′ 1″) to win the pole vault at the 2022 NCAA Outdoor Championships. Leon became the fourth-ever collegiate women’s pole vaulter with three clearances of 4.60m (15′ 1″) and the only one this season with three over 4.57m (15′ 0″) in collegiate competition.
Additionally, Leon captured her second straight ACC women’s outdoor pole vault title and was named the USTFCCCA Southeast Region Outdoor Women’s Field Athlete of the Year, the ACC Women’s Outdoor Field Performer of the Year as well as the league’s Outdoor Track and Field Scholar-Athlete of the…
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