INDIANAPOLIS (June 27, 2017) – For the first time, Oklahoma Christian has a nominee for the NCAA Woman of the Year award – basketball and track and field standout McKenzie Stanford.

The NCAA on Tuesday announced that a record 543 student-athletes had been nominated for the award, which was established in 1991 and now is in its 27th year. The NCAA Woman of the Year award honors graduating female college athletes who have exhausted their eligibility in their primary sport and distinguished themselves in academics, athletics, service and leadership throughout their collegiate careers.

The nominees represent all three NCAA divisions, with 229 from Division I, 117 from Division II and 197 from Division III. The nominees competed in 21 different women's sports, and 122 – including Stanford – were multisport athletes during their time in college.

Teresa DeBoard, OC's assistant athletic director for student-athlete well-being and senior woman administrator, and Murray Evans, OC's assistant athletic director for media relations, were deeply involved in Stanford's nomination process.

"McKenzie is an outstanding person as well as being an exceptional student-athlete," Evans said. "We believe she is a worthy candidate for this honor from the NCAA. She expects excellence of herself, leads by example through her hard work and dedication and has been nothing but a positive representative of the university, her teams, her family and herself."

Stanford, from Perkins, has starred in both basketball and track and field for OC. In hoops, she was a three-time All-Heartland Conference pick – making the first-team list in 2017 – and was named as Oklahoma's NCAA Division II player of the year by the website OklahomaSports.net. Stanford led the Heartland in scoring by a wide margin, averaging 18.4 points per game, rising this past season to No. 2 on the league's career scoring chart with 1,715 points.

She was named as the league's player of the week twice in 2016-17 and eight times during her career and was a first-team All-Heartland selection after receiving second-team honors as a sophomore and junior. In 2015-16, she went on to receive honorable mention on the Women's Basketball Coaches Association's NCAA Division II All-America list.

She also has competed for three seasons in track and field, tying the school record in the high jump with a mark of 5 feet, 8 inches in 2015 (earning All-South Central Region honors in the process) and winning the Great American Conference title in 2017.

Off the court, she has been active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and worked on numerous team community service projects that benefitted agencies such as Wings and Lilyfield Christian Services. Stanford also has spent time as a student mentor in OC's "Teaching the Exceptional Child" class, which serves special-needs children from Edmond.

Academically, she is a three-time recipient of the Division II Athletic Directors Association Academic Achievement Award and has been on the Heartland Honor Roll in each of her semesters at OC, making the President's List (3.5 or above grade-point average) in all but one of those semesters.

She's also a two-time Academic All-Conference honoree by the GAC and was named in 2015 as an All-Academic Individual by the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. This year, the GAC named her as a Crafton Tull/GAC Distinguished Scholar-Athlete, an award that requires a cumulative GPA of at least 3.7.

In May, she was chosen as OC's Ms. Eagle, an award presented annually to the female senior student-athlete who best combine success in her sport with representing the ideals of OC. It is considered OC's highest athletic honor.

In July, the Heartland Conference will choose its Woman of the Year nominee from among the nominations from member schools. The national Woman of the Year selection committee, made up of representatives from the NCAA membership, will then choose the top 30 honorees – 10 from each division.

From the top 30, the selection committee will determine the top three honorees from each division and announces the nine finalists in September. The NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics then chooses the 2017 NCAA Woman of the Year from those nine.

The top 30 honorees will be recognized and the 2017 NCAA Woman of the Year will be announced at the annual award ceremony Oct. 22 in Indianapolis.