Courtesy: Kenyon College Athletics
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – In January, 10 exceptional former student-athletes, including recent Kenyon College graduate Julia Wilson (Bethesda, MD/Sidwell Friends), will be honored as the 2019 Today’s Top 10 Award winners at the NCAA Convention.
The award recognizes former student-athletes for their successes in athletics competition, in the classroom and in the community. Recipients completed their athletics eligibility during the 2017-18 academic year and will be recognized at the Honors Celebration on Wednesday, January 23, in Orlando, Florida.
The honorees were selected by the NCAA Honors Committee, composed of representatives of NCAA member schools, conferences and distinguished citizens, including past awardees.
Wilson, a 2018 NCAA Woman of the Year Top 30 honoree, swam for the Kenyon Ladies and graduated from the College in May. She was a 2018 Division III champion in the 400-yard medley relay and was runner-up in the 100-yard breaststroke. Throughout her four-year collegiate career, she amassed six, top-three finishes in NCAA championship breaststroke events and a dozen top-five finishes overall. Additionally, Wilson was a 16-time All-American across 11 individual events and five relay events.
Wilson set Kenyon and North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) records in both the 100- and 200-yard breaststrokes. In 2016, she earned individual NCAC titles in both breaststroke events, as well as the 200-yard individual medley. She helped Kenyon to two team NCAC titles (2016, 2018) and NCAA national runner-up finishes the same two seasons.
In her senior campaign, Wilson was named Kenyon’s female winner of the NCAC Scholar-Athlete Award. She was voted the 2018 College Sports Information Directors of America Division III At-Large Academic All-American of the Year and also received Academic All-America honors in 2017.
In 2018, Wilson was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, a national academic honorary society, while already a member of Psi Chi, an international honor society for psychology. She received the NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship and Emory University’s Laney Graduate School Fellowship. In addition to athletics and her classwork, Wilson volunteered with Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and East Knox Elementary School, raised funds for the Alzheimer’s Association and served as a mentor and tutor.
Wilson graduated with a degree in psychology and currently is enrolled in a doctorate program at Emory, where she’s focusing her studies on cognition and development.
Prior to Wilson’s inclusion, Carla Ainsworth ’95 was Kenyon’s first recipient of this prestigious national award. Ainsworth, also a national champion swimmer, collected the honor in 1996, when it was known as Today’s Top VIII.
