Mercurio Selected as NCAA Woman of the Year Nominee

Three-time second-team Nebraska track and field All-American Angela Mercurio has been selected as a Big Ten Conference nominee for the 2019 NCAA Woman of the Year award, the conference announced Tuesday.

Mercurio is among 148 candidates across all three NCAA divisions (including 65 NCAA Division I students) nominated for this year’s honor, which has been presented annually since 1991 and recognizes the nation’s top senior female student-athlete who has excelled in the award’s four pillars of academics, athletics, service and leadership. Nebraska volleyball standout Billie Winsett-Fletcher is the only student from a current Big Ten school to have been chosen as NCAA Woman of the Year, receiving the award in 1996.

A native of Kitchener, Ontario, Mercurio was a two-time Google Cloud Academic All-America Second Team selection, as well as a three-time Big Ten Distinguished Scholar and four-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree. Earlier this year, she also was a recipient of both the NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship and the Big Ten Postgraduate Scholarship. She graduated from Nebraska in May with a 3.99 GPA as a double major in biochemistry and women’s & gender studies.

Mercurio was a four-year letterwinner on the Nebraska track and field team and was a three-time second-team All-American in the triple jump. She also earned the conference title in the event at the 2019 Big Ten Indoor Championships before going on to place ninth in the triple jump at the 2019 NCAA Indoor Championships.

The NCAA Woman of the Year selection committee, comprised of representatives from NCAA membership, will choose the top 30 honorees - 10 from each NCAA division - for this year's award. From the top 30, the committee will then determine the top three honorees in each division, with those nine finalists revealed in September. The NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics will ultimately select the 2019 NCAA Woman of the Year recipient from those nine finalists, with the top 30 honorees recognized and the award winner announced at a ceremony on Oct. 20 in Indianapolis.