NORMAL, Ill. – Illinois State senior volleyball player Ali (Line) O'Brien has been selected as the university's nominee for the 2019 NCAA Woman of the Year Award.
O'Brien is one of a record 585 female college athletes – and one of 80 volleyball players – that have been nominated by NCAA member schools for the 2019 NCAA Woman of the Year award. The nominees competed in 23 different sports across all three NCAA divisions, including 262 from Division I, 131 from Division II and 192 from Division III. Multisport student-athletes account for 144 of the nominees.
"I am extremely thankful for all of the opportunities I had as a student-athlete at Illinois State," O'Brien shared. "I chose ISU because I was given the chance to study nursing and play volleyball, which is not an option at many Division I schools. It has not been easy balancing the demanding schedule of volleyball while also studying to become a nurse and traveling for clinical, but with effective time management, communication, and the support of many people in the athletic department and College of Nursing, I have been successful."
The senior captain finished with a team-best 304 kills in 2018, averaging 2.64 kills per set on .325 hitting – the third-best percentage in the Missouri Valley Conference. O'Brien reached double-digit kills on 16 occasions in her final season as a Redbird, while being named the Top Dawg Challenge's Most Valuable Player, after helping guide ISU to a trio of wins over Eastern Illinois, Auburn and Butler in 2018. She turned in career-best kill performances in three-set, four-set and five-set matches this past season, tabulating an all-time best of 19 against Evansville. O'Brien finished her career with the seventh-best hitting percentage in volleyball program history with a .287 clip, while finishing her career in the top-25 in blocks (327) and kills (963).
Off the court, O'Brien was a three-time Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) representative and volunteered with several organizations in the Bloomington-Normal community. O'Brien, who graduated this past May with a bachelor's degree in nursing, carried a perfect 4.00 GPA and was named an ISU Bone Scholar for the 2018-19 academic year. In addition, she was awarded a spot on the 2018 Google Cloud Academic All-America® First Team, becoming just the third ISU volleyball student-athlete to earn an All-America selection and second to be given first-team laurels from College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).
For 29 years, the NCAA's Woman of the Year program has honored the academic achievements, athletics excellence, community service and leadership of outstanding female college athletes. Rooted in Title IX and directed by the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics, the NCAA Woman of the Year program celebrates the accomplishments of female college athletes across all three NCAA divisions, including more than 200,000 women who played in college sports during the 2018-19 academic year.
Athletic conference offices from around the country will select up to two nominees each from the pool of school nominees. Then, the Woman of the Year selection committee, made up of representatives from the NCAA membership, will choose the Top 30 honorees — 10 from each division.
The selection committee will determine the top three honorees from each division from the Top 30 and announce the nine finalists in September. From those nine finalists, the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics then will choose the 2019 NCAA Woman of the Year. The Top 30 honorees will be celebrated and the 2019 NCAA Woman of the Year will be named at the annual award ceremony Oct. 20 in Indianapolis.
For more information about the NCAA Woman of the Year awards program and previous winners, visit ncaa.org/woty.
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