Merrill-Johnson Named NCAA Woman of the Year for Montana (9/2/05)

BILLINGS, MT – Former Montana State University-Billings women’s soccer standout Margot Merrill-Johnson has been selected as the NCAA Woman of the Year for the state of Montana.  The campaign to crown the 15th annual NCAA Woman of the Year began this week with the selection of 51 state winners, including representatives from Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.  Merrill-Johnson is the first Woman of the Year state winner from Montana State-Billings.

The NCAA Woman of the Year recognizes outstanding female student-athletes who have excelled in academics, athletics and community leadership.  Chosen by a committee of representatives from member institutions, 29 of the 2005 state honorees are from Division I, while 16 represent Division II and six are from Division III.  They represent 15 sports.

The committee of institutional representatives also will select 10 finalists from the 51 state winners, based on grade-point average, athletics achievement and community service.  The NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics will chose the national winner from among the 10 finalists.  Finalists will be revealed in the September 26 issue of The NCAA News.

The 2005 NCAA Woman of the Year will be announced during the annual awards dinner October 29 in Indianapolis.  ESPN personality Danielle Sargent and Kara Lawson, former University of Tennessee, Knoxville, women's basketball standout and a 2003 Woman of the Year top-10 finalist currently playing in the WNBA, will serve as emcees for the evening.  As part of the Woman of the Year weekend of activities, honorees will be working with youth and the Association's character-building program Stay in Bounds at the NCAA Hall of Champions.

This year's state winners were chosen from a pool of 352 nominations, 76 more than in 2004 and the most since 2000, when there also were 352 candidates for the honor.  Division I submitted 188 applications.  Fifty-six nominations came from Division II and 111 were received from Division III.  The numbers represent increases in submissions for all three divisions over last year.

Merrill-Johnson was a double major in History and Sociology and graduated last spring with a 3.90 cumulative grade point average.  She played in and started every game of her collegiate soccer career, setting the school record for both at 70 games.  In 2004, Merrill-Johnson scored a school-record 11 goals and 28 points en route to breaking the MSU Billings career points record.  Of her 30 career goals, 11 were game-winners.  The Yellowjackets finished the 2004 season with an overall record of 12-4-3.  It was the first winning season in the program’s history.  MSU Billings also achieved its first ever regional ranking in 2004, finishing the season ranked tenth in the NCAA Far West Region.

In addition to starring on the soccer team, Merrill-Johnson also played on the women’s tennis team at MSU Billings.  She was a two-time Scholar Athlete of the Year in soccer and a three-time Scholar Athlete of the Year in tennis.  Merrill-Johnson earned three prestigious national honors last year.  In the fall she was named to the soccer Academic All-America First Team by the College Sports Information Directors of America.  At the end of the academic year Merrill-Johnson received one of 56 NCAA Postgraduate Scholarships worth $7,500.  She is currently using that scholarship to attend law school at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.  Additionally, she was named as the Collegiate Commissioners Association West Region female student-athlete of the year and a finalist for the CCA National Scholar Athlete of the Year.

Merrill-Johnson’s resume from her time at MSU Billings included a wide variety of activities outside of athletics.  She was a member of the MSU Billings Honors Program for all four years.  She belonged to the Sociology Club for four years, serving as its Vice President for one year.  Merrill-Johnson served as the President of the MSU Billings Latter-Day Saint Student Association each of her four years at the school.  She also worked as the MSU Billings Student Union building manager for two years.  In the little free time she had left over, Merrill-Johnson also volunteered for the YWCA Children’s Program domestic violence shelter and worked as a volunteer for youth soccer camps and tennis lessons.

In her personal statement on the Woman of the Year nomination form, Merrill-Johnson said, “Successful athletics require hard work, dedication, and passion.  Learning to love these qualities drove my athletic career and coincidently will drive my future.  I learned the necessity of dedication—to teammates, to coaches, and to accomplishing goals—in every practice.  Only through full dedication could I call myself a true student-athlete.  Sports taught me passion.  I love competing.  Every game or match I played I loved competing more and more.  This taught me to put my heart into any task in order to succeed.”

Merrill-Johnson did indeed put her heart into everything she did during her time at MSU Billings, leaving a lasting legacy of achievement at the school.  During that entire time—with no fanfare or publicity—Merrill-Johnson needed some help with that same heart that she gave so much of to her teammates and coaches.  She excelled as an NCAA student-athlete for four years while competing with a heart pacemaker that she received just before she began college.

Woman of the Year State Winners