Rock Hill, S.C. -Anderson University women's basketball player Alexy Mollenhauer was named the 2019-2020 South Atlantic Conference Woman of the Year. In addition to this honor, Mollenhauer moves on as a nominee for the prestigious NCAA Woman of the Year award. From the original field of 605 nominees, Mollenhauer is now one of the 161 remaining student-athletes in the running for the NCAA Woman of the Year award.
Established in 1991, the NCAA Woman of the Year award recognizes graduating female college athletes who have exhausted their eligibility and distinguished themselves in academics, athletics, service and leadership throughout their collegiate careers. NCAA member schools nominated 605 women for the National Woman of the Year award, the most in the program's 30-year history. Conference offices reviewed all nominees from their member schools. Nationally, 161 conference-level honorees have been nominated for the 2019 NCAA Woman of the Year.
Next, conference-level nominations will be forwarded to the NCAA Woman of the Year Selection Committee, which will choose the top 10 honorees in each of the three NCAA divisions. The NCAA will announce the Top 30 honorees in early September. From among those 30 candidates, the selection committee determines the top three finalists in each division. The NCAA 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 at an awards dinner in Indianapolis on Sunday, October 20, 2019.
Mollenhauer, a senior guard, graduated with a perfect 4.00 GPA in English/Secondary English education and was named the 2019-20 SAC Presidents Award winner. She earned numerous accolades, both on and off the court, in her final season with the Trojans. In the classroom, she was a 2019-20 a CoSIDA Academic All-America® Division II Women's Basketball First Team selection, a CoSIDA Academic All-District® honoree, as well as being a four-time Dean's List selection. Mollenhauer was named the 2020 SAC Women's Basketball Elite 20 winner and was a four-time SAC Commissioner's Honor Roll selection.
On the court, Mollenhauer was named SAC Player of the Year and SAC Female Athlete of the Year for the second consecutive season and was a first team All-SAC selection. She was named D2CCA Southeast Region Player of the Year for the second time, was a D2CCA First Team All-American, and WBCA First Team All-American. The five-time SAC AstroTurf Player of the Week earned United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) National Player of the Week honors on Feb. 4, 2020 and became the first player in Anderson program history to reach 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds for their career. She led the conference in both scoring (19.7 ppg.) and rebounding (12.4 rpg.) during the 2019-20 season.
A native of Lindale, Texas, Mollenhauer is active on and off of the court in the Anderson community. She has served in Hope Kids at Hope Fellowship Church for the last four years. She volunteers at two schools, Calhoun Academy of the Arts and Nevitt Forest Elementary, reading to the elementary students. Mollenhauer has also participated in Martin Luther King Jr. Day service project for the past two years and has helped with numerous girls basketball summer camps hosted at Anderson.
NCAA Woman of the Year
From a program-record pool of 605 school nominees, 161 college athletes have been named conference-level nominees for the 2020 NCAA Woman of the Year Award.
The nominees represent student-athletes from 21 different sports spanning all three NCAA divisions. Of those nominated, 59 nominees competed in Division I, 39 in Division II and 63 in Division III.
The NCAA Woman of the Year program is rooted in Title IX and has recognized graduating female college athletes for excellence in academics, athletics, community service and leadership since its inception in 1991.
Conferences can recognize two nominees if at least one is a woman of color or international student-athlete. All nominees who compete in a sport not sponsored by their school's primary conference, as well as associate conference nominees and independent nominees, were placed in a separate pool to be considered by a selection committee. Four nominees from the pool were selected to move forward in the process with the conference nominees.
The Woman of the Year Selection Committee, made up of representatives from the NCAA membership, will now choose the Top 30 honorees — 10 from each division — from the conference-level nominees. The Top 30 honorees will be announced in September. From there, the selection committee will narrow the pool to three finalists from each division. The NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics will select the 2020 Woman of the Year from the nine finalists.
The Top 30 honorees will be celebrated and the 2020 NCAA Woman of the Year will be named this fall.
