Skinner in Top 30 for 2021 NCAA Woman of the Year Award

10 hours ago

SEC Staff

Photo: NCAA

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (September 23, 2021) – Former Kentucky volleyball player Avery Skinner is among the Top 30 honorees for the 2021 NCAA Woman of the Year Award, as announced by the Woman of the Year Selection Committee.

Skinner, a member of the 2020 NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball Championship team, graduated with Summa Cum Laude honors this past spring, earning a degree in Communications Sciences and Disorders.

A six time member of the College of Health Sciences Deans List, she was Kentucky’s female nominee for the 2020-21 SEC H. Boyd McWhorter Scholar-Athlete Postgraduate Scholarship. Skinner earned a spot on the Fall SEC Academic Honor Roll three times as well as the 2016-17 First-Year SEC Academic Honor Roll. She was a member of the 2020-21 AVCA All-America First-Team, the 2020-21 AVCA All-Southeast Region Team, the 2020-21 All-SEC Team and the 2017 SEC All-Freshman Team. Skinner completed over 250 community service hours at Kentucky, and was a member of the 2019 and 2020 SEC Volleyball Community Service Teams. She participated in a week-long mission trip to Ethiopia with fellow UK student-athletes, feeding children who were malnourished, visiting orphanages to deliver supplies as well as play with children and babies, and made home visits to families living in Korah, which is an extremely impoverished part of Ethiopia. Skinner also worked with the American Sign Language Deaf Culture Club, the Lexington Hearing and Speech Clinic, St. Joseph East Hospital, Breckenridge Elementary School, the Center for Child Development of the Bluegrass, Habitat for Humanity and Special Olympics of Kentucky.

Established in 1991, the NCAA Woman of the Year award is rooted in Title IX and recognizes graduating female college athletes who have exhausted their NCAA eligibility and distinguished themselves in academics, athletics, service and leadership throughout their collegiate careers.

The Top 30 honorees include 10 from each of the three NCAA divisions. The selection committee will determine the top three honorees in each division from the Top 30, and the nine finalists will be announced this fall. From those nine finalists, the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics will choose the 2021 NCAA Woman of the Year.

On Tuesday, Nov. 9, during a virtual awards ceremony, the Top 30 honorees will be celebrated, and the NCAA Woman of the Year will be named.