WATERVILLE, MAINE – Recent Johnson State College graduate Nicole Menard has been nominated for the North Atlantic Conference Woman of the Year and NCAA Woman of the Year.
Menard is one of the record 543 nominees across all three divisions who will be considered for NCAA Woman of the Year. She and eight other student-athletes will be considered for NAC Woman of the Year.
Both awards honor graduating student-athletes who have distinguished themselves throughout their collegiate careers in the areas of academic achievement, athletics excellence, service and leadership.
Menard was a leader on the court and in the classroom, serving as a two-year team captain of the Badgers women's basketball team. She participated in an international trip to play basketball in Italy through American International Sports Teams (AIST) in July 2015. The History major also earned a Secondary Licensure and was named to the President's List and as an Ellsworth Trust Scholar. She presented her senior history thesis at NCUR's National Conference of Undergraduate Research at UNC-Asheville and was the Humanities Department Award Recipient and Secondary Education Department Award honoree.
Menard took a history course that travelled abroad for two weeks to Paris, London, and Normandy, and presented her senior history thesis at Johnson's first Annual Symposium, while also being the Lula F. Potter Cup Award Recipient for recording the highest cumulative GPA of the graduating class. Menard was the 2017 NAC Senior Scholar Athlete of the Year in women's basketball and was named to the NAC All-Academic Team. She is currently taking an anthropology course, while travelling abroad for two weeks to Martinique this summer. On campus, she was a part of the Johnson Student-Led Activities Programming (SLAP), College Steps Program and Residence Life. She has worked with the Badger Alternative Break, the Vermont Special Olympics, the Vermont Summer Special Olympics, and Relay for Life.
The NAC Woman of the Year award winner will be announced in late July, and will be honored on their campus during the 2017-18 academic year.
The NCAA Woman of the Year selection committee, made up of representatives from the NCAA membership, will choose the top 30 honorees, 10 from each division, in early September. From the top 30, the selection committee determines the top three honorees from each division and announces the nine finalists in late September. The 2017 NCAA Woman of the Year will be announced Sunday, Oct. 22, at the awards dinner in Indianapolis.