2019 Honda Award

[Hannah Abbott]

The Honda Sport Award has been presented annually by the CWSA for the past 43 years to the top women athletes in 12 NCAA- sanctioned sports and signifies “the best of the best in collegiate athletics”.  Nebraska's Mikaela Foecke was not among the 4 finalists for the 2018 volleyball season.

Roni Jones-Perry of Brigham Young University, Stanford University’s Kathryn Plummer, Jordyn Poulter of the University of Illinois and Samantha Seliger-Swenson from the University of Minnesota are the four finalists for the Class of 2019 Honda Sport Award for Volleyball as announced today by Chris Voelz, Executive Director of THE Collegiate Women Sports Awards (CWSA).

 Omitting Foecke negates any credibility this award has.  Sort of pathetic, actually.

 

[Undertow]

It is hard to tell when they actually vote or determine who the 4 finalists will be. It appears that they make the selection prior to the tournament. When you look at the previous year, it lists Simone Lee and Haleigh Washington from Penn State (no. 1 seed), Plummer from Stanford (no. 2 seed), and Rhamat Alhassan (middle blocker, SEC player of the year) from Florida (no. 3 seed). Kelly Hunter didn't make the list. 

It appears that if you're not on the top seeded teams in the tourney (and I mean 1 through 4), then they don't seriously consider you. To get their credibility back, they need to make the selections AFTER the tournament. The AVCA should do the same.

Another point on Foecke. For all the hype that Plummer gets (and as a 6' 6" outside hitter, she gets a lot of attention), Foecke was clearly the best player in the championship match. And for those who say it was just one match, go and look at their season stats. The only stat that Plummer has over Foecke is kills per set. Unfortunately, that's the sexy stat the everyone fawns over. But in every other stat line, Foecke was better. Foecke had more service aces, less service errors, a better hitting percentage (by about 40 points), more  digs per set, more blocks per set (THAT surprised me), and even more assists if you wanted to drill down that far.