CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – On Wednesday, the Collegiate Women Sports Award announced that North Carolina’s Fiona Crawley has been selected as the winner of the Honda Sport Award for tennis, as announced by Chris Voelz, Executive Director of the Collegiate Women Sports Awards (CWSA).
Crawley becomes the second Tar Heel tennis member to be a finalist for the award in the past three seasons. In 2021, Sara Daavettila was a finalist and ultimately won the award.
In 2022-23, Crawley won two grand slam singles events, spent the entire spring season ranked No. 1 and helped lead Carolina to a program-record 35 wins. Later, she went undefeated in NCAA team play to help North Carolina win its first NCAA team title. After leading UNC to its first national title, Crawley won the NCAA Doubles Championship with Carson Tanguilig and capped off the season by being named the ACC player of the year and ITA national player of the year.
“In all of my years of coaching, there has been no one more deserving of this award. She embodies everything we want in an athlete who comes to North Carolina,” said head coach Brian Kalbas. “The way she carries herself as a person, teammate and in the classroom, along with her accomplishments on the court makes her uniquely qualified for this award. What she achieved this past season was most likely the single best season in collegiate tennis history. What goes unnoticed is how nice and considerate she is as a teammate and competitor. Both Tyler and I feel extremely lucky to coach Fiona and as a program we congratulate her on this amazing achievement.”
The Honda Sport Award has been presented annually by the CWSA for the past 47 years 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 2023 Honda Cup, which will be presented on a live telecast on CBS Sports Network on June 26, at 8:30 ET, in Los Angeles, California.
Crawley was chosen by a vote of administrators from over 1,000 NCAA member schools.
Other finalists for this year’s tennis honor were Lea Ma (Georgia), Mary Stoiana (Texas A&M) and Fangran Tian (UCLA).
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