The Collegiate Women’s Sports Awards (CWSA), presented by Honda, is celebrating its 50th anniversary throughout the 2025–26 athletics season.
For five decades, the Honda Sport Award has honored the nation’s top women athletes in 12 NCAA-sanctioned sports, symbolizing “the best of the best in collegiate athletics.”
The Honda Sports Award is an annual award in the United States, given to the best collegiate female athlete in each of twelve sports. There are four nominees for each sport, and the twelve winners of the Honda Sports Award are automatically in the running for the Honda-Broderick Cup award, as the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year.
Process
Winners are selected in each of the 12 NCAA-sanctioned sports by a panel of more than 1,000 NCAA administrators. Each woman is selected not only for her superior athletic skills, but also for her leadership abilities, academic excellence and eagerness to participate in community service.
At the end of the year, one deserving athlete will be chosen as the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year and receive the coveted Honda-Broderick Cup.
Melissa Belote Ripley was the first Sun Devil recipient of the Honda Sports Award. She majored in communications at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and is regarded as one of the greatest American swimmers of all time for her accomplishments in both collegiate and Olympic competition. While at Arizona State, she won six individual National Collegiate Swimming Championships, leading the university to two national championships. A four-year All-American, she earned the esteemed Broderick Award in 1977 as the most outstanding women’s collegiate swimmer in the country. She earned three gold medals for the United States swim team at the 1972 Olympics and set an American record for the 200-meter backstroke. She was later selected to the U.S. Swimming “Team of the Century” in 1999. 





