Patton selected as Central’s woman of the year nominee
Central Dutch Athletics
PELLA — Former Central College women’s track and field sprinter Kate Patton (Murray) was announced as the school’s nominee for the NCAA Woman of the Year Award Thursday afternoon.
The NCAA Woman of the Year program honors the academic achievements, athletics excellence, community service and leadership of graduating female college athlete. Each conference office reviews nominations from its member schools and submits its league nominee to the NCAA’s selection committee. The committee chooses the top 30 nationally—10 from each division—and then three finalists from each division are picked. The Committee on Women’s Athletics then selects the winner, announced at a banquet in Indianapolis, Ind. Oct. 28. There are 581 nominees nationwide.
Since the program was launched in 1995, Central has had seven student-athletes chosen as the state or conference woman of the year. (Nominees were chosen by state until 2006, when they were selected by conference). Most recently, women’s track and field all-America honoree Jill Ziskovsky was the Iowa Conference nominee in 2011.
A psychology major, Patton graduated with a 3.96 GPA. Patton is working for Mid-Iowa Family Therapy Clinic as a service support worker. Patton’s responsibilities include working with the Department of Human Services on cases of abuse or neglect inside of Des Moines-area homes and ensuring the families and children receive the required levels of support and resources.
She’s a two-time All-American having earned the honor at the 2015 indoor and 2016 outdoor national meets. She also earned all-Iowa Conference honors five times, most recently at the 2018 indoor meet. Scoring 13 points at the indoor league meet and 11 outdoors this year, Patton was named the team’s Most Valuable Performer.
