21 Volleyballers Nominated by Conferences for NCAA Woman of the Year

21 volleyball players have been nominated forward by their conferences as candidates for the NCAA’s Woman of the Year award.

The original list consisted of of 543 nominees, one student-athlete from each NCAA school who has exhausted her eligibility, who were each nominated to the conference level. Now, each conference has selected their nominee (up to 2 athletes across all sports) that will advance to the division level. At this point, the top 10 from each of the NCAA’s 3 divisions (for 30 total athletes) will be named semi-finalists for the annual award.

While none of the nominated volleyball players are from the traditional “Power 5” athletic conferences (those that dominate the college football and financial landscape)m there are still some big names on the list in the world of volleyball. That includes two AVCA All-Americans. One is San Diego’s Lauren Schad, a middle blocker who averaged .70 blocks/set and 2.76 kills/set last season while hitting a career-high .410 (she had never hit better than .263 in her college career). She was named an AVCA Honorable Mention All-American for those efforts. Creighton’s Lauren Smith is also a conference nominee from the Big East and an AVCA Honorable Mention All-American. She had a 3.53 cumulative GPA while earning a degree in marketing and entrepreneurship and led her teams to a combined 65-7 Big East record in 4 seasons. Her team advanced to the Elite 8 of the 2016 NCAA Division I Championship tournament last fall.

The list also includes three-time All-Mountain West selection Laura Beach from Wyoming.

Next, 9 finalists (3 from each division) will be named finalists before an awards ceremony in Indianapolis on Sunday, October 22nd that will select the NCAA Woman of the Year winner.  Then, the NCAA Woman of the Year selection committee chooses the ultimate winner on the basis of academic achievements, athletics excellence, community service, and leadership.