One of the Hillsdale College women's track and field and cross country team's most accomplished athletes, on and off the course, earned more recognition on Monday afternoon.
2021 graduate Christina Sawyer (Tecumseh, MI/Tecumseh) is moving on to the next phase of the NCAA Woman of the Year award process, the NCAA announced.
Sawyer, Hillsdale College's nominee, was chosen to represent the Great Midwest Athletic Conference in contention for the national award, which was established in 1991 to recognize graduating female student-athletes who have exhausted their eligibility and distinguished themselves in academics, athletics, service and leadership throughout their collegiate careers.
NCAA member schools are encouraged to honor their top graduating female college athlete each year by submitting their name for consideration for the award. This year, 535 athletes from across all three NCAA Divisions were submitted, including 107 Division II athletes.
Just 152 of those 535 were chosen as conference representatives, including Sawyer, who stood out from the pack for her impressive balance of athletic and academic success.
She was a two-time G-MAC Champion in track and field, winning the 5,000m run at the G-MAC Indoor championships in both 2019 and 2020, with a best time of 17:15.15, and she placed eight times in G-MAC track and field championship meets, helping the Chargers win indoor conference titles in both 2020 and 2021.
Sawyer also was a critical part of Hillsdale's success on the cross country course. She earned three All-G-MAC honors in cross country, including a first-team honor in 2020 thanks to a seventh-place finish (22:07.4) in the 6,000m championship race, and twice earned All-Midwest Region honors.
The Tecumseh, Michigan native helped Hillsdale reach and competed in three consecutive NCAA Division II Cross Country National Championship meets, with a top finish of 67th (22:08.4) in 2017. Only the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting cancelation of the fall 2020 NCAA Division II championships kept her from making a fourth-straight appearance.
In the classroom, Sawyer was just as impressive, if not moreso, during her time at Hillsdale. She graduated in the spring of 2021 with a 3.99 GPA as her class' salutatorian, and was the recipient of the Trout Award, presented annually to an outstanding Hillsdale College senior to help assist with graduate studies.
During her time at Hillsdale, she was named the 2017-18 Organic Chemistry Student of the Year, the 2018-19 College Physics Student of the Year, and earned the Sophomore Woman High Achievement Award from the Lamplighters organization in 2018-19. She was also a two-time USTFCCCA Academic All-American, and a two-time Hillsdale President's Scholar Athlete Award Recipient.
In the summer of 2019, Sawyer spent 10 weeks at an internship at the Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids, investigating the binding of WD Repeat protein domains to the histone protein tails. Her research concluded with a presentation to Van Andel Research Institute faculty and staff on her findings, and later became the basis of a thesis Sawyer wrote and presented at Hillsdale College in 2020.
Sawyer also spent five weeks in the summer of 2020 working with Dr. Kelli Kazmier of Hillsdale College, developing Elongation Factor G protein mutants for examination with EPR spectroscopy.
Although school and athletics kept her busy during her time at Hillsdale, Sawyer also made time to be an active volunteer, working with Hillsdale Hospice from 2018 to 2020, Hillsdale Hospital from 2019 to 2020 and Bread of Life food pantry in the spring of 2021.
Sawyer is one of two G-MAC honorees to move on as a conference representative. All 152 remaining candidates will be considered by the Woman of the Year selection committee, made up of representatives from across the NCAA membership, who will winnow the list down to a Top 30 – 10 from each division.
From the Top 30, the Woman of the Year selection committee will determine the top three honorees in each division and announce nine finalists. The NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics then will choose the 2020 NCAA Woman of the Year, who will be named this fall.
This is the second straight year a Hillsdale athlete has represented the G-MAC in the NCAA Woman of the Year selection process, and the second year in a row the representative has come from the Charger women's cross country and track and field teams. Sawyer joins former teammate Arena Lewis, who was the 2020 G-MAC nominee for the NCAA Woman of the Year award, in receiving this honor.
For more information on the award and the nomination process, as well as past honorees, visit the NCAA Woman of the Year website here.