BATON ROUGE – LSU women’s golfer Austin Ernst, the winner of the 2011 NCAA Women’s Division I Golf Championship, is one of the six nominees for the United States Sports Academy’s May women’s athlete of the month.
Each month the Academy conducts online balloting for the top women’s athlete of the month and LSU fans can participate to help Austin in the balloting for May athlete that opened Tuesday and runs to June 14.
Fans can vote at www.ussa.edu or go directly to the ballot at http://ussa.edu/ballots/athlete-of-the-month.
Nominated with Ernst are German hammer thrower Betty Heilder; USA cyclist Sara Hammer; USA sprinter English Gardner of the University of Oregon; USA softball pitcher Chelsea Thomas from the University of Missouri; and Chinese table tennis star Ding Ning.
Ernst became the first freshman to win the NCAA women’s golf title since Southern California’s Jennifer Rosales do so in 1998 and was the first LSU women’s golfer to win the individual title. She shot a final round of six-under 66 that included a hole-in-one and 60-foot birdie for a four-round total of seven-under 281 to win the title by 3 strokes at the Traditions Club in Bryan, Texas.
Ernst and her LSU teammates finished third in the best finish by LSU in the NCAA women’s championships.
The winners each month will be considered as a candidate for the 2011 Athlete of the Year ballot. In December 2011, the Academy will name the Male and Female Athlete of the Year for the 27th consecutive year. The recipients of these prestigious awards are selected annually through worldwide balloting hosted by the Academy in conjunction with USA Today and NBC Sports.