Audrey Ernst led her team to four titles at the USA Triathlon Collegiate National Championships. The 2019 individual runner-up earned USAT All-America honors, followed by honorable mention recognition in 2021. Ernst was a two-time USAT all-region honoree and was her team's Most Valuable Player in 2019. The team captain has represented the U.S. in international competition, highlighted by a 2019 USA Triathlon U-23 national championship title at the World Triathlon Continental Cup in Richmond, Virginia. Ernst graduated summa cum laude and earned three College Triathlon Coaches Association Scholar All-America recognitions. In 2023, she was an NCAA Walter Byers Scholarship finalist, and she received the Pac-12 Tom Hansen Medal of Honor and Arizona State's Bill Kajikawa Award for her excellence in academics, athletics, leadership and service. She studied heart rate variability as a research volunteer assistant for Arizona State's Mind and Body Lab and presented survey findings on student athletic impacts of substance misuse prevention at a 2023 NASPA, Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, conference. Ernst was a campus Student-Athlete Advisory Committee representative, serving for two years as chair of the mental health board and one year as president. The Pac-12 Student Athlete Leadership Team representative spent three years in the Tip of the Fork leadership program and two years in the EmpowHER women's leadership initiative. Ernst also was a member of the Student Nurses' Association and volunteered at the local children's hospital.
Established in 1991, the award is rooted in Title IX and recognizes female student-athletes who have completed their undergraduate studies and distinguished themselves in their community, in athletics and in academics throughout their college careers.
Selected from a record-breaking 619 nominees submitted by member schools — a group that was then narrowed to 164 nominees at the conference level — the Top 30 honorees include 10 from each of the three NCAA divisions. Each honoree has demonstrated excellence in academics, athletics, community service and leadership. The honorees represent 15 sports, including two student-athletes representing NCAA Emerging Sports for Women. They have a variety of majors, including national security and intelligence, neuroscience, economics, civil engineering, education, nursing, computer science and business management.
"We are thrilled to celebrate 30 incredible student-athletes who surpassed the standard of excellence on their campus, in their community and on their teams," said Renie Shields, chair of the Woman of the Year Selection Committee and senior associate athletics director/senior woman administrator at Saint Joseph's. "This decorated and diverse group represent the thousands of women competing in college sports each year and are contributing to the ongoing growth of women's sports."
The selection committee will determine three honorees from each NCAA division, for a total of nine finalists. From those finalists, the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics will choose the 2023 NCAA Woman of the Year.
The NCAA Woman of the Year will be named, and the Top 30 will be celebrated, at the NCAA Convention in January. Below is a summary of their accomplishments.