NCAA Release

RICHARDSON, Texas –– Hardin-Simmons University senior track and field star Ashley Huston will be the American Southwest Conference’s nominee on the 2009 NCAA Woman of the Year ballot, the league office announced on Tuesday (June 23) after a vote of the conference’s Senior Woman Administrators.

Huston (Buffalo Gap, TX / Jim Ned HS), the 2008-09 ASC Female Athlete of the Year, had a banner year for the Hardin-Simmons track program, which was in its inaugural season. Huston won the indoor pentathlon and outdoor heptathlon and high jump NCAA Championships. Huston was also an All-American in the indoor high jump and the outdoor long jump. She also won five events at the ASC Championships and was named the national field athlete of the year by the National Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. Huston, an education major, also was named an academic all-district selection by CoSIDA and was an academic all-ASC selection. She was also the ASC Field Athlete of the Year.

Huston was recently named the Honda Award winner as the top female athlete in Division III, making her the first ASC athlete to be so honored. All of this came on the heels of her tearing her anterior cruciate ligament at the end of basketball season in the 2007-08 school year. Huston has already graduated from Hardin-Simmons and is working as a coach at Cisco High School. She graduated with a 3.74 grade point average.

The NCAA Woman of the Year award, now in its 19th year, honors senior student-athletes for their cumulative collegiate achievements in service, leadership, athletics and academics. Nominees must have earned a varsity letter in a NCAA-sponsored sport and competed during the 2008-09 academic year. Also, they must have completed intercollegiate eligibility in a primary sport by the end of the 2009 spring season or received an undergraduate degree prior to the conclusion of the spring 2009 term and have a minimum cumulative GPA of 2.50 (4.00 scale).

A selection committee will choose the top 10 winners in each of the NCAA’s three divisions. Among those 30 honorees, the committee will determine the top three in each division. Finally, the members of the Committee on Women’s Athletics (CWA) will vote from among the top nine to determine the 2009 NCAA Woman of the Year. The top three honorees from Divisions I, II and III will be honored and the 2009 NCAA Woman of the Year award winners will be announced at a dinner in Indianapolis on October 18, 2000.

Former Hardin-Simmons volleyball standout Virginia Aguilar was a NCAA Woman of the Year finalist in 2007.