Olympian and Stanford swimmer Simone Manuel wins Honda Award as top female collegiate athlete

Jack White | USA TODAY Sports

Show Caption Hide Caption Simone Manuel's race remarks hit home Simone Manuel is the first African-American female to win an Olympic individual swimming event, but the 100-meter freestyle wasn't the only race on her mind in Rio.

Despite winning two gold medals in the 2016 Summer Olympics, Simone Manuel went back to college for her senior year of swimming.

Manuel helped Stanford win back-to-back NCAA championships in her final two collegiate seasons. She earned six NCAA titles in the 2017-18 season alone.

Manuel’s performance this year helped her claim yet another award. She became the 2018 Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year, which was set to be presented by Honda on Monday in Los Angeles.

“Congratulations to Simone on being named the 2018 Honda Cup winner and having her name etched in the Honda Cup family forever,” CWSA executive director Chris Voelz said in a statement. “Simone claims the Honda Cup from among an impressive class of candidates, all of whose performances are noteworthy. Her dominant year ranks as the ‘best of the best’ as she joins an elite group of collegiate athletes who have been recognized throughout the past 42 years.”

Manuel became the first African-American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in an individual swimming event when she did so in 2016. She was nominated for the Honda award two times before. Manuel, majoring in communications, twice has been a Pac-12 academic honoree and is a CoSIDA first-team Academic All-American.

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Honda recognizes the top athlete in 12 women’s sports during the school year. From that list, three are selected by representatives from 1,000 NCAA member schools as finalists for the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year. The other finalists this year were South Carolina basketball player A’ja Wilson and track and field athlete Maggie Ewen of Arizona State. Manuel was chosen the overall winner by the Collegiate Women Sports Awards Board of Directors.

Also honored were Megan Cunningham, distance runner from Missouri, with the Honda Inspiration award; Caroline Kurgat, cross country athlete from Alaska Anchorage for the Honda Division II Athlete of the Year; and Eudice Chong, tennis player from Wesleyan, who was the Honda Division III Athlete of the Year.

Wilson scored 17.9 points a game and helped the Gamecocks win an NCAA championship in 2017, her junior season. As a senior, Wilson averaged 22.6 points and 11.8 rebounds as her team lost to Connecticut in the Elite Eight. She now plays for the Las Vegas Aces in the WNBA after going to the team as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2018 draft.

Ewen finished as NCAA champion in three events in 2018, two outdoor and one indoor. She also won the NCAA championship in the hammer throw as a junior. She holds the NCAA record for both the hammer and the shot put. She finished 21st in the hammer at the 2017 IAAF World Championships.

Stanford athletes have won the Honda award four times. This is the second consecutive year a swimmer for the Cardinal has won. Olympian Katie Ledecky, now a pro, won it in 2017.

The other Honda nominees included: Florida’s Rhamat Alhassan for volleyball, Boston College’s Sam Apuzzo for lacrosse, UCLA’s Rachel Garcia for softball, Ole Miss’ Arianne Hartono for tennis, Wake Forest’s Jennifer Kupcho for golf, New Mexico’s Ednah Kurgat for cross country, UCLA’s Christine Peng-Peng Lee for gymnastics, Stanford’s Andi Sullivan for soccer, Connecticut’s Charlotte Veitner for field hockey.