STANFORD, Calif. – Football's Bryce Love, women's volleyball's Kathryn Plummer and women's water polo's Maggie Steffens have been named semifinalists for the 88th AAU James E. Sullivan Award.
The AAU Sullivan Award has been presented annually since 1930 to the most outstanding amateur athlete in the United States. World renowned golfer Robert "Bobby" Jones received the inaugural award in 1930 and swimmer Anne Curtis became the first female to accept the award in 1944.
Voting for the award is open to the public at aausullivan.org. The semifinalist round opened at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, March 14 and closes at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, March 20. Finalists will be named on Wednesday, March 21 and the AAU James E. Sullivan Award presentation will be held at the New York Athletic Club on Tuesday, April 17.
Love, the Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Year, Doak Walker Award winner and Heisman Trophy finalist, paced Power 5 running backs in rushing yards, rushing yards per game, yards per carry and number of runs of 20, 30, 40 and 50 yards as a junior in 2017. He set an FBS record with 13 runs of 50 or more yards and had 12 100-yard rushing performances. The Wake Forest, North Carolina, native was Stanford's 10th unanimous All-America selection and also won the Lombardi Award, presented to an NCAA Division I player, regardless of position, based on performance, leadership, character and resilience.
As a sophomore in 2017, Plummer was the TeamSnap/AVCA Division I Player of the Year and became the first player in AVCA history to earn that honor after being named the National Freshman of the Year the previous season. The outside hitter from Aliso Viejo, California, was the Pac-12 and espnW Player of the Year and is a two-time AVCA First Team All-American. She led the Pac-12 and ranked sixth nationally with 5.40 points per set and her 555 kills in 2017 were the seventh-most in a single season in program history.
Steffens, a three-time NCAA champion, two-time Olympic gold medalist and two-time Olympic MVP, was Swimming World's Women's Water Polo Player of the Year for 2017. She concluded her Stanford career with a banner senior year in leading the Cardinal to its sixth NCAA championship last May. In addition to being named ACWPC and MPSF Player of the Year, she also was named a Pac-12 Tom Hansen Conference Medal winner, awarded an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship and became the first Stanford women's water polo player to receive academic All-America recognition from CoSIDA.
Steffens earned her bachelor's from Stanford in science, technology and society with a concentration in innovations and organizations last June, was on campus in the fall quarter to pursue her master's in management science and engineering and is currently playing professionally in Hungary.