ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — University of New Mexico cross country student-athlete Ednah Kurgat was named the 2018 Honda Sport Award winner for cross country, the Collegiate Women Sports Awards (CWSA) announced Monday.
Kurgat, a sophomore from Eldoret, Kenya, is now a finalist for the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year and the prestigious 2018 Honda Cup, which will be awarded on June 25, 2018, in Los Angeles, California.
“I am humbled and delighted to be named the recipient of such a prestigious award,” Kurgat said. “This means a lot to me and is a reminder that hard work, dedication and commitment is never in vain. I thank God and everyone who supported me through the season.”
Kurgat finished her debut season at New Mexico with the program’s first-ever NCAA individual title in cross country, capping an undefeated season in which she won all five meets she competed at and helped capture UNM’s second NCAA team title in the last three years.
Over the course of the 2017 cross country season, Kurgat won the individual titles at the Joe Piane Notre Dame Invitational, the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational, the Mountain West Championships and the Mountain Region Championships before emerging with an NCAA Championships record time for the six-kilometer race.
She is the first female cross country runner to win an NCAA team and individual title in same year since 2010.
She earned USTFCCCA Women’s National Athlete of the Year honors after her NCAA win, the first New Mexico athlete and the first from the Mountain West to claim the award.
She was also named All-American, USTFCCCA Division I Mountain Region Women’s Athlete of the Year and Mountain West Cross Country Female Athlete of the Year.
Kurgat earned the Honda Sports Award for cross country after a vote of administrators from over 1,000 NCAA member schools. Other nominees for the award were Washington’s Amy-Eloise Neale, Boise State’s Allie Ostrander and San Francisco’s Charlotte Taylor.
Kurgat is just the second student-athlete in New Mexico history to win the Honda Sports Award in any sport, joining women’s golf’s Caroline Keggi, who won the Honda Sport Award for golf for 1986-87 season.
“It’s a great honor to be only the second woman in UNM history to receive this award in any sport,” New Mexico head coach Joe Franklin said. “It’s a testament to Ednah’s ability as a student-athlete.”
Courtney Frerichs (cross country, 2015) is the only other Lobo to be nominated for the award in any sport.
The Honda Sport Award has been presented annually by the CWSA for the past 42 years to the top women athletes in 12 NCAA-sanctioned sports and signifies “the best of the best in collegiate athletics.”
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