Ingram Up for National Honor

September 19, 2008

Former Southwestern Oklahoma State University cross country runner Rachel Ingram has been selected by the Lone Star Conference as the league’s nominee for the prestigious 2008 NCAA Woman of the Year award.|

Each NCAA conference office is allowed to nominate one female athlete from its member institutions for selection as the NCAA Woman of the Year. The award honors the outstanding female student-athlete who has excelled in academics, athletics, leadership and community service. The top 10 from each of the NCAA’s three divisions and nine overall finalists will be announced later this month. The winner will be announced during a formal celebration Sunday, Oct. 19 in Indianapolis, Ind.

Ingram, a native of Springfield, Mo. and a 2004 graduate of Willard High School, has maintained a 4.0 grade point average in SWOSU’demanding school of pharmacy.

She has recognized as the school’s top student-athletes and has twice been awarded the university’s Female Athlete-of-the-Year. She was a two-time qualifier for the NCAA Division II National Cross Country Championships and was one of only a handful of runners in Lone Star Conference history to earn all-conference honors all four seasons.
Earlier this year she was one of 58 student-athletes from across the nation to be awarded an NCAA postgraduate scholarship. The scholarships are one-time, nonrenewable grants of $7,500 designed to help offset the costs of attending the graduate or professional school of the recipient’s choice.

As a runner, she won multiple meets and was twice the winner of the multi-school Oklahoma State University Jamboree in 2005 and 2006.