INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. - Kristen Yanchoris, a member of the Loyola University Maryland Class of 2019, has been named a nominee for the 2019 NCAA Woman of the Year award, as announced by the NCAA Wednesday.
 
Established in 1991, the NCAA Woman of the Year award recognizes gradating female college athletes who have exhausted their eligibility and distinguished themselves in academics, athletics, service and leadership throughout their collegiate careers. One of a record 585 female collegiate student-athletes honored this year, Yanchoris is one of 37 women's lacrosse players across all three NCAA Divisions to be nominated and one of just 12 from NCAA Division I. The average grade-point average of the nominees in 3.71.
 
Yanchoris, the first women's lacrosse player in Patriot League history to earn four-straight all-conference honors and three-consecutive Academic All-Patriot League accolades, helped Loyola to four-straight undefeated Patriot League Regular-Season Championships and two Patriot League titles throughout her career. She was also twice named the Patriot League Scholar-Athlete of the Year for women's lacrosse.
 
An IWLCA All-Mid-Atlantic Region Second Team defender in 2019 and the Patriot League Defensive Player of the Year as a junior, Yanchoris graduated as one of just seven players in Loyola history – and 28 in Patriot League history – to earn four-straight all-conference honors. One of eight defenders nationally to earn ILWomen All-America honors in 2018, she was again named an honorable mention All-American in 2019 after helping the Greyhounds' defense rank 12th in the NCAA in scoring defense.
 
A two-time team captain, Yanchoris anchored a defensive unit that held all nine Patriot League opponents to single digits in goals this year, as the Greyhounds led the League with a 6.33 goals against average. Starting all but one game throughout her career (due to injury), Yanchoris accumulated 114 ground balls and 83 caused turnovers, and helped Loyola's defense limit League-foes to an astounding 6.97 goals-against average over the course of four years.
 
Yanchoris was just as impressive in the classroom. Graduating Summa Cum Laude and with the second-highest GPA (3.97) of all student-athletes in Loyola's Class of 2019, Yanchoris posted perfect 4.0 GPAs through six of eight semesters as a business administration major with a concentration in marketing and minor in information systems. She was twice named to the Google Cloud/CoSIDA Academic All-District 2 At-Large First Team and is a member of three National Honor Societies: Chi Alpha Sigma Student-Athlete National Honor Society, Beta Gamma Sigma Business Honor Society and Mu Kappa Tau National Marketing Honors Society (where she serves as Vice President).
 
Voted Loyola's Ernest Lagna Award winner as the top senior-athlete in the Class of 2019, Yanchoris also earned Loyola's Class of 2019 Business Achievement Award, a Magis Scholar Award for achieving strong grades in a rigorous program of study, the Student Choice A.L.I.V.E. Award for demonstrating Action, Loyalty, Integrity, Values and Excellence and the women's lacrosse program's Diane Geppi-Aikens Endowed Scholarship Award for sharing the values, characteristics and traits that Geppi-Aikens did for family, competitiveness, advocacy for sports and lacrosse, and toughness.
 
A member of the Baltimore Leadership Academy and Janssen Sports Leadership Academy, Yanchoris attended the Athlete Leadership Connection – hosted by the Women Sports Foundation – and served as the Co-Director of Media on Loyola's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC).
 
Overall, this year's nominees competed in 23 different sports, with 262 competing in Division I, 131 in Division II and 192 in Division III. Multisport student-athletes account for 144 of the nominees.
 
Conference offices will now select up to two nominees each from the pool of school nominees. Then, the Woman of the Year selection committee, made up of representatives from the NCAA membership, will choose the Top 30 honorees – 10 from each division.
 
The selection committee will determine the top-three honorees from each division from the Top 30 and announce the nine finalists in September. From those nine finalists, the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics will then choose the 2019 NCAA Woman of the Year.
 
The Top 30 honorees will be celebrated and the 2019 NCAA Woman of the Year will be named at the annual award ceremony October 20, 2019 in Indianapolis.