BATON ROUGE – LSU’s Austin Ernst, who captured the women’s NCAA individual golf national championship on Saturday, received another accolade when she was named one of four nominees for the 2010-2011 Honda Sports Award to determine the top woman collegiate golfer as announced by The Collegiate Women Sports Awards.
Joining Ernst on the nomination list are two other Southeastern Conference golfers – NCAA runner-up Kelli Shean of Arkansas and Marta Silva Zamora of Georgia – along with Lizette Salas of Southern California.
The winners after nationwide balloting will become a candidate for The Honda-Broderick Cup awarded annually to The Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year. The ballot will be emailed to all NCAA senior women administrators for voting later this week.
In addition to the honor of this selection, American Honda will donate $1,000 to the women’s athletic fund of LSU and each nominee’s university. The winner’s program will receive an additional $4,000 for a total of $5,000.
One SEC athlete has already won the award for their particular sport, Alabama gymnast Kayla Hoffman.
Ernst became the first freshman since 1989 to capture the individual title, shooting a 72-hole total of 7-under 281. She became the first LSU women’s golfer to win the title in the 32-year history of the program, just the third (man or woman) golfer to win the title and the first since Earl Stewart in 1941.