The American Athletic Conference and the NCAA have announced that former track and field student-athletes Juliana Madzia of Cincinnati and Chardae Greenlee of Memphis were selected as Top 30 honorees for the 2017 NCAA Woman of the Year Award.
The American is one of two Division I conferences with two honorees in the final pool of candidates. Schools nominated a record 543 women for the award this year, which conferences then narrowed to 145 nominees to be considered by the committee.
“The Top 30 honorees are remarkable representatives of the thousands of women competing in college sports each year,” said Sarah Hebberd, chair of the Woman of the Year selection committee and director of compliance at Georgia. “They have seized every opportunity available to them on the field of play, in the classroom and in the community, and we are proud to recognize them for their outstanding achievements.”
Madzia, Cincinnati's recipient of the 2016-17 American Athletic Conference Female Scholar-Athlete Award, ranks 10th all-time in the Bearcats' record book in the 10,000m run. She received American Cross Country All-Conference honors this past season and was named to the Dean's List at UC seven times. A 2017 Rhodes Scholarship finalist, Madzia posted a 4.0 undergraduate cumulative GPA in Neuroscience and earned First Team Academic All-America
® Track & Field/Cross Country honors by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).
Greenlee, a 2017 USTFCCCA All-Academic honoree, is a two-time All-American Athletic Conference outdoor triple jump champion. She graduated magna cum laude from Memphis with a Bachelor of Science in Education and finished her undergraduate years with a 3.73 cumulative GPA. A two-time American Athletic Conference All-Academic honoree, Greenlee was named to the Dean's List three times and received the 2017 John McLendon Minority Postgraduate Scholarship Award sponsored by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) and the John McLendon Minority Scholarship Foundation.
The Top 30 honorees - including 10 from each of the three NCAA divisions - have demonstrated excellence in academics, athletics, community service and leadership. They represent 12 sports and a wide range of academic majors, including neuroscience, communication, biomedical engineering, sport management, political science and art.
In late September, the selection committee will announce three women from each division as the nine finalists. From the finalists, the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics will select the 2017 Woman of the Year, who will be named Oct. 22 at a ceremony in Indianapolis.
CLICK HERE for the list of Top 30 honorees