For half a century, the Collegiate Women’s Sports Awards have been half of that story. Founded in 1976 as the Broderick Awards and sponsored by Honda since 1986, the CWSA has spent 50 years recognizing the nation’s finest feminine collegiate athletes — honoring not simply their athletic brilliance, however the full student-athlete: competitor, educational and chief. It is the solely recognition of its form to span each the AIAW and NCAA eras, a residing testomony to the full arc of ladies’s school sports activities in America. As the group marks its fiftieth anniversary throughout the 2025-26 season, it’s celebrating throughout campuses the voices of the ladies who made that historical past and the superb younger athletes who will carry it ahead for the subsequent 50 years.
At Duke, that historical past runs deep. Nine Blue Devils have earned the program’s Honda Award throughout two sports activities: golf and tennis. Their tales span continents and many years, united by their widespread thread of excellence, perseverance and Duke.
Marking the fiftieth Anniversary of the Collegiate Women Sports Awards, we have a good time 9 Duke Honda Award winners—seven in ladies’s golf and two in ladies’s tennis.
?? Vanessa Webb (1998) @DukeWTEN
?? Candy Hannemann (2000-01) @DukeWGOLF
?? Virada Nirapathpongporn (2001-02)… pic.twitter.com/B5PIuTwm0e— Duke Athletics (@DukeATHLETICS) March 25, 2026
Seven Trophies. One Program
No program in the nation has produced extra Honda Award winners in one sport than Duke ladies’s golf. Seven instances, a Blue Devil has been named the nation’s prime collegiate golfer, spanning greater than 15 years from Candy Hannemann’s pioneering win in 2001 to Virginia Elena Carta in 2016.
At the middle of that dynasty is Amanda Blumenhurst, the solely Duke golfer to win the Honda Award in back-to-back years, 2007 and 2008. Virada Nirapathpongporn (2002), Anna Grzebien (2005) and Celine Boutier (2014) have been all nationwide champions and Honda Award winners.
Virada Nirapathpongporn’s path to Duke and the Honda Award is one of the most exceptional tales in Duke program historical past. Growing up in Thailand, she was one of solely a handful of women enjoying golf in her area. A full scholarship to Duke was, at the time, an nearly unheard-of alternative for a younger lady from Southeast Asia.
“For me to come from such a small country in Thailand, to study abroad, to be exposed to all these great opportunities, and be recognized as a woman athlete by the Honda Award. It’s incredible,” Nirapathpongporn stated. “I think it gives inspiration to other young girls that they can work really hard, be dedicated, and if they are successful, they will be recognized globally.”
The greatest impediment on her journey, she says, wasn’t geography, however one that each golfer is aware of intimately: getting out of her personal manner.
“In a sport like golf where playing within yourself is the main focus, the biggest obstacle is getting over ourselves,” Nirapathpongporn explains. “I always struggled with it coming from high school. But once I got to Duke, with the help of Coach Brooks and the experience I got in college golf, I really learned the lessons to overcome that.”
By the time she graduated, she says, she was prepared for the skilled degree. “I knew how to get out of my own way and perform the way I knew myself to,” stated Nirapathpongporn.
That psychological lesson was put to the take a look at on the eve of the last spherical of the 2002 NCAA Championship, with Duke and Arizona locked in a battle for the nationwide title. Nirapathpongporn was main individually, however the weight of the second was bearing down.
“I was so nervous. I was about to get in my own way,” Nirapathpongporn remembers.
It was Coach Dan Brooks who steadied her, saying to her, “You’re right where you need to be. This is where you take the bull by its horns. You don’t back down from what you’re fearing — you go into it anyway.”
She did. Duke received, and Brooks helped form her psychological fortitude into what it’s at this time.
Now again in Thailand, Nirapathpongporn has spent 15 years giving again to the sport that gave her a lot. She works with the Thailand Ladies Golf Association and the Thailand Golf Foundation to develop the subsequent era of elite opponents and leisure feminine golfers.
“Golf is such a great game and we want to see the love continue for a long, long time,” Nirapathpongporn says. “Who knows? Some of them might have the opportunity to study abroad and maybe become Honda Award winners eventually. We would like to see that.”
Two Champions
Duke’s tennis program has produced two Honda Award winners of its personal. Separated by a decade, however united by the similar customary of excellence. Vanessa Webb claimed the honor in 1999, with Mallory Cecil following in 2009.
Cecil remembers the second she discovered she had received with hanging readability and honesty.
“I’ll never forget hearing that I had won the award and honestly didn’t know what it was about or represented,” Cecil remembers. What she found in her analysis resonated strongly together with her. The Honda Award, she discovered, wasn’t nearly efficiency as she had initially assumed, however a recognition of her entire particular person.
“That just made me feel really seen, not just for what I had achieved, but who I was and what I embodied,” Cecil stated. “There is life after tennis. It was very affirming to know that no matter what I go and do after sports, the ingredients inside of me for greatness, for excellence, remain there.”
Cecil factors to indecision as the impediment that formed her most—particularly the weight of deciding whether or not to go to school, when and the place.
“Not making a decision is also a decision,” Cecil mirrored.
It was solely when she ripped off the band support and dedicated to enrolling at Duke in January to affix the ladies’s tennis staff that issues actually clicked.
“My vision just narrowed in, and I was really able to take off the weight of everything else and focus on the things right in front of me. There was just such a freedom in that.”
Cecil attracts a direct line from her tennis mindset to how she approaches life at this time.
“In tennis, you play the point that’s in front of you,” added Cecil. “You move on from it — good or bad — and make a decision on how to play the next one. In my life today, it’s really just trying to make the best next decision and move on.”
When Cecil displays on the Honda Award and the journey to it, she returns repeatedly to the ladies round her.
“I’ve just been surrounded by incredibly strong women who have been great leaders and great mentors to me,” Cecil stated. “Leadership is like a muscle. It gets stronger the more you use it.”
Her 2009 teammates, who received the nationwide championship collectively, have been foundational. “I still remember feeling so incredibly supported by every single one of them,” stated Cecil. “They believed in me and then I believed in myself. As women, we really do build on the shoulders of those who came before us.”
Perseverance, of course, shouldn’t be distinctive to sport. It is the widespread language of life for anybody who has ever pushed via one thing laborious. For Cecil, tennis was merely the place she discovered to talk that language fluently.
“Sports gave me an environment where I could learn how to mentally, physically and emotionally persevere through trying seasons and experience the fruit of overcoming. That’s an incredible skill that has translated into everything I’ve done since,” Cecil stated.
A Golden Moment in a Transformational Year
The CWSA’s fiftieth Anniversary shouldn’t be an strange milestone. During the 2025-26 season, the group has launched a nationwide celebration visiting campuses throughout the nation, gathering tales of the highly effective feminine athletes. The end result is the largest meeting of winners ever on July 26-27 in New York City, the place legends similar to Caitlin Clark, Mia Hamm, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and Katie Ledecky will collect alongside the new Class of 2026. It might be broadcast dwell nationally on CBS Sports Network on July 27.
Both Nirapathpongporn and Cecil see the anniversary as a second that extends far past their very own careers. Nirapathpongporn appears to be like forward to the younger women in Thailand and round the world who will see what’s attainable.
“I really hope the Honda Award continues to give recognition to women athletes in the world,” she stated. “It will give further inspiration to the next generations.”
For Cecil, the six-year-old choosing up a racket for the first time deserves the similar alternatives that formed her personal profession.
“These entities that continue to push for the advancement and growth of female athletes are incredibly important. I give my eternal gratitude to all of them,” Cecil stated.
For Duke, the fiftieth anniversary is a chance to do what the Blue Devils have at all times accomplished finest — have a good time their legacy of excellence and use it to encourage what comes subsequent. Nine award winners. Two sports activities at the prime of their fields; half a century of the nation’s finest.
The story is already extraordinary. The subsequent chapter in the story of robust feminine athletes continues to be being written.
For extra data on the Collegiate Women Sports Awards fiftieth Anniversary, go to collegiatewomensportsawards.com.
#GoDuke