MEDFORD, MA (July 13, 2023) -
Lia Rotti, a 2023 Tufts University graduate and a member of the women's track & field team, is one of two student-athletes chosen to represent the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) for the 2023 NCAA Woman of the Year honor as well as the Division III Commissioners Association Women's Sport Athlete of the Year award.
A committee of conference administrators selected Rotti and Middlebury College's Elise Morris out of a group of 11 nominees to be the NESCAC's representatives for the awards.
The NCAA Woman of the Year Award honors graduating student-athletes who have distinguished themselves throughout their collegiate careers in the areas of academic achievement, athletics excellence, service, and leadership. The Division III Commissioners Association Women's Sport Student-Athlete of the Year award honors athletes in the same areas as the NCAA Woman of the Year Award.
Rotti graduated from Tufts with summa cum laude honors and a 3.98 GPA as an applied mathematics major. A Phi Beta Kappa inductee, Rotti was presented with Tufts' Lewis F. Manly Memorial Prize and the Fredrick Melvin Ellis Prize. She garnered Academic All-America honors in 2022 and 2023 from the College Sports Communicators (CSC) organization. Rotti was also named the USTFCCCA Division III Women's Indoor Track & Field National Scholar Field Athlete of the Year in 2022 and a USTFCCCA three-time all-academic honoree.
Rotti contributed to the Tufts community as a course grader for Mathematical Modeling and Computation Class and served as a volunteer research assistant at Tufts with Professor Arkadz Kirstein working on a treatment for pancreatic cancer using computational models and last summer she performed undergraduate research doing Math Modeling of Treatments for Organ Transplants at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis led by Dr. Julia Arciero.
The 2022 NCAA Division III Indoor Track & Field Champion in the triple jump, Rotti concluded her career with nine NCAA All-American citations and garnered all-region honors 17 times. A two-time NESCAC Champion in the triple jump, Rotti was a six-time All-NESCAC performer and the 2021 NESCAC Rookie of the Year. Rotti won the New England Outdoor Track & Field title in the long jump and triple jump twice and owns the outdoor triple jump record. She also captured the New England Indoor Track & Field titles in the long jump and triple jump four times and owns the record in the indoor long jump. Rotti was named the 2023 USTFCCCA Division III Indoor & Outdoor Track & Field East Region Field Athlete of the Year and the Carla Coffey Division III New England Indoor Track & Field Athlete of the Meet twice as well as the USTFCCCA Division III Outdoor Track & Field New England Region Field Athlete of the Year in 2021.
Eligible female student-athletes are nominated by their member school. Each conference office then reviews the nominations from its core member schools (and sponsored sports) and submits its conference nominee(s) to the NCAA. All nominees who compete in a sport that is not sponsored by their school's primary conference, as well as associate conference nominees and independent nominees, will be sent to a separate pool to be considered by a committee. Then, the NCAA Woman of the Year selection committee identifies the Top 30 – 10 from each division – and from there selects three finalists from each division. From the nine finalists, the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics then selects the NCAA Woman of the Year, who is named during a luncheon at the NCAA Convention.
Materials from NESCAC and the NCAA were included in this release.
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