A look back at the national title winners, Olympians and trailblazers who have claimed the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year honor
Forty-six women have won the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year distinction, known as the Honda Cup. Forty-four of them either won a national championship in college or went on to the Olympic Games. Thirty-seven did both.
The Honda Cup is the top individual honor of the Collegiate Women Sports Awards, which are marking their 50th year. The anniversary broadcast will air at 7 p.m. Eastern time July 27 on the CBS Sports Network, with the NCAA as a sponsor of the event in New York City.
The awards are older than the NCAA’s governance of women’s championships. They began in 1976 as the Broderick Awards, created by Judie Holland, then UCLA’s director of women’s athletics, along with Irv Grossman and Tom Broderick.
The selection for the top award runs through the membership. Senior woman administrators at roughly 1,000 NCAA schools vote to name the best player in each of 12 sports, then vote again to narrow those 12 to a Top Three. The group’s board of directors picks the winner from there.
The standard the voters are asked to apply has not changed since 1977, and it was never only about winning: Athletic achievement is considered, but so are team contribution, scholastic work and involvement in a winner’s school and community.
It started with Lusia Harris
The first Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year, honored in June 1977, was Delta State basketball star Lusia Harris. She played a few years after Title IX was enacted and before the NCAA sponsored a single women’s championship. Harris led Delta State to three consecutive Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women national titles and won a silver medal with Team USA at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, where she scored the first basket in Olympic women’s basketball history.
Texas swimmer Jill Sterkel, the 1981 winner and the first swimmer to win the award, competed in the transition between the AIAW era and the NCAA hosting women’s championships. She powered the Longhorns to the last two AIAW national championships and finished with 16 individual national titles split across AIAW and NCAA competition.
A roll call of NCAA champions
- Florida’s Tracy (Caulkins) Stockwell anchored the Gators to the first NCAA women’s swimming and diving team title in 1982, the inaugural academic year of NCAA women’s championships. She left Gainesville with 16 individual national titles and became the award’s first two-time winner.
- Hawaii’s Deitre Collins-Parker was the first volleyball player to win the cup. She played middle blocker for the Hawaii teams that won back-to-back NCAA titles in 1982 and 1983.
- Wisconsin’s Suzy Favor Hamilton, a middle-distance runner, won nine NCAA individual championships, including four straight 1,500-meter outdoor titles.
- UCLA’s Lisa Fernandez was the first softball player to win the Honda Cup. She went 93-7 as a pitcher for the Bruins, hit an NCAA-leading .510 as a senior and won two national titles.
- North Carolina’s Mia Hamm won four national championships with the Tar Heels before her professional career made her one of the best known athletes in soccer.
- Long Beach State’s Misty May-Treanor led her team to a 36-0 record and a national title in 1998, the first perfect season in NCAA women’s volleyball.
- Georgia’s Courtney Kupets Carter won nine individual NCAA titles, a gymnastics record, helping her team win four straight team championships from 2006 to 2009.
- Baylor’s Brittney Griner led her team to a 40-0 record and NCAA title in 2012. Baylor was the first basketball team in NCAA history, men’s or women’s, to win 40 games in a season.
- UConn’s Breanna Stewart won four straight NCAA basketball championships and is still the only player in NCAA history named Women’s Final Four Most Outstanding Player four times.
- Stanford’s Simone Manuel left with 14 NCAA event titles, six of them individual, and swam on Stanford teams that won back-to-back team championships in 2017 and 2018.
- Virginia’s Gretchen Walsh, the 2025 winner, finished her college swimming career with 25 NCAA event titles, helping Virginia win four team championships in a row. She went 16-for-16 in relay finals across all four NCAA championships.
Thirty-eight of the 46 winners won an NCAA national championship, team or individual, during their college careers. Five more won AIAW national titles in the years before the NCAA governed women’s championships. Only three left college without a national title of any kind: Caitlin Clark, whose Iowa basketball teams lost in the 2023 championship game and 2024 semifinals; Jackie Stiles, who reached a Women’s Final Four with Missouri State; and Dawn Staley, who went to three Final Fours at Virginia without winning one, though she’s now won three NCAA titles as the head coach at South Carolina.
Olympians Made Here
The other half of the roster’s story is the Olympic one. Thirty-eight of the 46 winners have competed at the Games, and the line starts with the very first Honda Cup winners. Lusia Harris, Ann Meyers Drysdale and Nancy Lieberman all played on the first U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team in 1976. Every Summer Olympics since has drawn from this list.
Here is the full list, in order of first Games:
| Cup winner | School | Sport | Olympic Games | Competed for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ann Meyers Drysdale | UCLA | Basketball | 1976 | United States |
| Lusia Harris | Delta State | Basketball | 1976 | United States |
| Nancy Lieberman | Old Dominion | Basketball | 1976 | United States |
| Jill Sterkel | Texas | Swimming and diving | 1976, 1984, 1988 | United States |
| Cheryl Miller | Southern California | Basketball | 1984 | United States |
| Tracy (Caulkins) Stockwell | Florida | Swimming and diving | 1984 | United States |
| Mary T. Meagher Plant | California | Swimming and diving | 1984, 1988 | United States |
| Jackie Joyner-Kersee | UCLA | Track and field | 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996 | United States |
| Deitre Collins-Parker | Hawaii | Volleyball | 1988 | United States |
| Kamie Ethridge | Texas | Basketball | 1988 | United States |
| Missy Marlowe | Utah | Gymnastics | 1988 | United States |
| Teresa Weatherspoon | Louisiana Tech | Basketball | 1988, 1992 | United States |
| Vicki Huber-Rudawsky | Villanova | Track and field | 1988, 1996 | United States |
| Suzy Favor Hamilton | Wisconsin | Track and field | 1992, 1996, 2000 | United States |
| Rebecca Lobo | UConn | Basketball | 1996 | United States |
| Cristina Teuscher | Columbia | Swimming and diving | 1996, 2000 | United States |
| Dawn Staley | Virginia | Basketball | 1996, 2000, 2004 | United States |
| Lisa Fernandez | UCLA | Softball | 1996, 2000, 2004 | United States |
| Mia Hamm | North Carolina | Soccer | 1996, 2000, 2004 | United States |
| Chamique Holdsclaw | Tennessee | Basketball | 2000 | United States |
| Courtney Kupets Carter | Georgia | Gymnastics | 2004 | United States |
| Tara Kirk Sell | Stanford | Swimming and diving | 2004 | United States |
| Ogonna Nnamani Silva | Stanford | Volleyball | 2004, 2008 | United States |
| Natasha Watley | UCLA | Softball | 2004, 2008 | United States |
| Angela Williams | Southern California | Track and field | 2004, 2008 | United States |
| Misty May-Treanor | Long Beach State | Volleyball | 2004, 2008, 2012 | United States |
| Candace Parker | Tennessee | Basketball | 2008, 2012 | United States |
| Christine Sinclair | Portland | Soccer | 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020 | Canada |
| Megan Hodge Easy | Penn State | Volleyball | 2012 | United States |
| Missy Franklin Johnson | California | Swimming and diving | 2012, 2016 | United States |
| Maya Moore | UConn | Basketball | 2012, 2016 | United States |
| Katie Ledecky | Stanford | Swimming and diving | 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024 | United States |
| Sarah Pavan | Nebraska | Volleyball | 2016, 2020 | Canada |
| Brittney Griner | Baylor | Basketball | 2016, 2020, 2024 | United States |
| Simone Manuel | Stanford | Swimming and diving | 2016, 2020, 2024 | United States |
| Breanna Stewart | UConn | Basketball | 2016, 2020, 2024 | United States |
| Rachel Garcia | UCLA | Softball | 2020 | United States |
| Gretchen Walsh | Virginia | Swimming and diving | 2024 | United States |
The list is not finished. Clark and Aliyah Boston, the two most recent basketball winners, are only a few years out of college and in the prime of their professional careers, with the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics ahead of them.
The Honda Cup at 50, by the numbers
44 of the 46 winners either won an NCAA or AIAW national championship in college or competed at the Olympic Games. Thirty-seven did both. Only Caitlin Clark and Jackie Stiles did neither.
48 is the number of times the cup has been awarded since 1977. It was not awarded in 2020, when the pandemic canceled the event, the only interruption in the award’s history.
46 women have won it. Four won twice: Tracy (Caulkins) Stockwell, Maya Moore, Rachel Garcia and Caitlin Clark. The vote also produced ties in 1984 and 2010.
38 won an NCAA national championship, team or individual, during their college careers. Five more won AIAW national titles before the NCAA governed women’s championships.
38 competed at the Olympic Games.
31 schools have produced a Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year. UCLA leads with five, followed by Stanford and UConn with four each, and Virginia, California, Tennessee, Southern California and Texas with two apiece.
29 is the number of NCAA titles for Gretchen Walsh of Virginia, the most of any cup winner. The total includes 25 individual and relay event titles and four team championships.
17 winners come from basketball, more than any other sport. Swimming and diving has nine; volleyball and track and field five each; softball four; gymnastics and soccer three apiece.
7 sports have produced a winner.
