INDIANAPOLIS – A month after graduation, Jenny Tracy continues to represent North Carolina Central University positively for all of her undergraduate success and achievements after being announced as NCCU’s nominee for the 2016 NCAA Woman of the Year award on Tuesday.
"As this marks the 26th year of the NCAA Woman of the Year award program, I am so honored to nominate Jenny Tracy for this award,” said NCCU Director of Athletics Dr. Ingrid Wicker McCree. “During her tenure at NCCU, Jenny embodied the four pillars of the Woman of the Year award. She excelled academically and athletically, but she also committed to service and leadership in the numerous roles outside of athletics on campus and in the community. Jenny is truly deserving of this distinction and we are extremely proud of her accomplishments at NCCU and those she will receive in her professional life.”
Tracy, who is from La Grande, Oregon, played four years of softball for the Lady Eagles before graduating in May and immediately starting a job with Shell in Texas. She is one of a record-setting 517 honorees in 2016, including 231 from the NCAA Division I ranks.
Tracy epitomizes the four pillars of the NCAA Woman of the Year:
ACADEMICS - Tracy graduated as an NCCU valedictorian in 2016 with a perfect 4.0 grade point average and a bachelor’s degree in business. She earned the Chancellor’s Award for being the female student-athlete with the highest GPA. Her numerous academic achievements also included MEAC Commissioner’s All-Academic Team (x3), School of Business Dean’s Award, Department of Business Administration Marketing Award, Chancellor’s Scholar, Thurgood Marshall Institute Scholar and NCCU softball team academic award.
ATHLETICS - The four-year letter winner had her healthiest season on the field as a senior on her way to becoming NCCU’s first Division I CoSIDA Academic All-America® First Team award winner. Tracy started all 49 games in 2016 and led the Lady Eagles with five home runs. The second baseman boasted a final .307 batting average and ranked second on the squad with 42 hits, 18 RBI, seven doubles and six sacrifice bunts to earn the team player’s choice award. In her career, Tracy played 128 games for the Maroon and Gray despite suffering season-ending injuries in both her freshman and junior seasons. Tracy accumulated 91 hits, 42 RBI, 39 runs, 13 doubles, eight home runs, one triple and four stolen bases over that time.
SERVICE – Tracy has dedicated a large portion of her volunteer efforts in business development and homelessness. Since 2014, she has served on the executive board for The Helius Foundation, a nonprofit specializing in helping Necessity-Driven Entrepreneurs (individuals who are unable to find traditional, living wage employment). In an effort to help the homeless community, Tracy introduced the Soap for Hope initiative to SAAC, where athletes collect their unused hotel toiletries on road trips and SAAC assembles individual bags to donate to the Durham Rescue Mission. In the past two years, the Soap for Hope initiative has packaged over 120 individual bags for donation. Tracy’s mission to helping others can be best described in her favorite quote from Gandhi that says, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
LEADERSHIP – The very successful student-athlete has shown the ideal characteristics in leadership in her time at NCCU. Tracy has served as a team “captain” throughout the university. When she was not playing softball, Tracy was showcasing her Eagle Pride by regularly attending other athletic events or participating, volunteering, representing or speaking at other campus functions and events. She was a volunteer tutor and resume writing assistant for the athletics department in her commitment to encouraging younger athletes to strive for academic success. Tracy served as the president for both the NCCU Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) and the Entrepreneur Club. She moved from the west coast to the east to study and play ball at an HBCU and continued to expand her horizons by studying Global Business at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, in 2013.
NCAA Woman of the Year
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. The NCAA Woman of the Year selection committee selects the Top 30 – 10 from each division and then three finalists from each division. The Committee on Women’s Athletics selects the winner from the Top 9.
The top 30 (10 per division) will be announced in early September and the top nine (three per division) will be announced in late September. The 2016 NCAA Woman of the Year will be announced Sunday, Oct. 16, at the awards dinner in Indianapolis.