DePaul’s Mitrea; Georgtown’s Coogan Selected As BIG EAST’s NCAA Woman of the Year Nominees
NEW YORK – DePaul women’s tennis standout Rebeca Mitrea and Georgetown cross country and track & field All-American Katrina Coogan were selected by the BIG EAST as the 2016 league nominees for the NCAA Woman of the Year Award. The pair was also recently honored as two of the 22 student-athletes who earned the 2015-16 BIG EAST Scholar-Athlete Sport Excellence Award.
The duo is among a select group of student-athletes from Division I, II and III advancing to the next stage of the selection process. The NCAA will announce the nominees from each conference later this month. The Woman of the Year selection committee will select the top 10 honorees in each division in early September. The selection committee will then choose and announce the nine finalists (three from each division) at the end of September. The NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics will cast votes among the nine finalists to determine the 2016 Woman of the Year. There were 141 conference honorees in 2016, 54 from Division I.
The finalists will be honored and the 2016 NCAA Woman of the Year will be named at the annual ceremony Oct. 16 in Indianapolis.
Of the 141 conference honorees, 40 were multisport student-athletes, three are potential Olympians for the upcoming Olympic Games in Rio. 2016 marks the 26th year of the Woman of the Year Award Program, which was established in 1991.
Mitrea became DePaul’s all-time leader in career wins this season with 117 and is also the career leader in total wins (singles and doubles). She competed with partner Yuliya Shupenia in the NCAA doubles tournament in May. In May, the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) presented her with the Arthur Ashe Leadership and Sportsmanship Award. With her father recovering from a series of surgeries, Mitrea has taken his place teaching tennis lessons in her home country of Romania. She will return to Lincoln Park after the summer break as a graduate student who will be working in the athletics department business office and serve as a volunteer assistant tennis coach.
Coogan, an 11-time All-American on the Hilltop, had a stellar indoor track & field season that saw her anchor the NCAA champion distance medley relay (DMR) squad and turn in a third-place performance in the women’s 3,000-meter run at the 2016 NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships, held in Birmingham, Ala. Coogan continued her impressive senior campaign during the outdoor season, where she again anchored a championship DMR team – this one at the 2016 Penn Relays Carnival. Coogan and the relay team brought home one of two titles for the Hoyas at the Penn Relays. She picked up a pair of event crowns at the 2016 BIG EAST Outdoor Championships, winning the 1,500-meter run handily and successfully defending the 4x800-meter title as she ran the third leg of the relay. She became just the second Hoya in program history to win back-to-back conference 1,500-meter crowns. An NCAA finalist, she finished 20th in the 5,000-meter run at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, to pick up the 11th All-America distinction of her career.
The NCAA Woman of the Year program honors the academic achievements, athletics excellence, community service and leadership of graduating female college athletes from all three divisions. To be eligible, nominees must have competed and earned a varsity letter in an NCAA-sponsored sport and must have completed eligibility in her primary sport. Eligible female student-athletes are nominated by their member school. Each conference office then reviews the nominations from its member schools and submits its conference nominee to the NCAA. In addition to Mitrea and Coogan, each of the 10 BIG EAST member institutions nominated student-athletes who they deemed necessary. Follow the NCAA Woman of the Year information on social media with
#NCAAWOTY. Click
here for the NCAA’s release on the conference selections. To view the conference selections click
here.