Recent Westfield State graduate Lexi Popp (Westford Academy/Westford, Mass.) was recently announced by the NCAA as the school's NCAA Woman of the Year nominee.
Popp was a two-time All-American as a senior in 2019-20 as a track and field athlete, earning indoor All-America honors in the 400 meters in March, then finishing fourth in the nation in the 400 hurdles at the NCAA Championship meet in Ohio in May.
Popp was also active on campus as the President of Westfield State's Student Athlete Advisory Committee.
Woman of the Year nominees are selected based on a number of criteria, including success in athletic competition at the NCAA Championship level, scholarship, and community service activities.
Rooted in Title IX and directed by the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics, the NCAA Woman of the Year program celebrates the accomplishments of female college athletes across all three NCAA divisions. In 2019, more than 200,000 women are playing college sports, and the NCAA received a program record of 585 nominations for this prestigious award.
Institutional nominees are then forwarded to the conference level, then conference nominations are forwarded to the NCAA Woman of the Year Selection Committee, which identifies the top 10 honorees in each of the three NCAA divisions. From those 30 candidates, the selection committee then determines the three finalists in each division for a total of nine finalists.
The Committee on Women's Athletics will select the 2019 NCAA Woman of the Year from the nine finalists. The 2019 NCAA Woman of the Year will be announced Sunday, Oct. 20, at an awards dinner in Indianapolis.