Ledecky_AwardLedecky_Award
Women's Swimming & Diving

Nation's Top Academic Honor

STANFORD, Calif. - Psychology major and Stanford women's swimming standout Katie Ledecky was named the Google Cloud Division I Academic All-America Team Member of the Year on Thursday. 

The award recognizes the top student-athlete among all Academic All-Americans (across all sports, men's and women's) and is voted on by the College of Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).

Ledecky is the first sophomore to win the top academic award in college athletics and joins Tommy Vardell (1991-92) as the only Stanford athletes to earn the honor.

"I would very much like to thank Google Cloud and CoSIDA for this honor, and for their sponsorship of this Academic All-American program that serves to recognize so many dedicated student-athletes around the country," Ledecky said. "Also, I wish to express my tremendous gratitude to my classmates, teammates and coaches, the Stanford Athletics department, and the faculty and administration at Stanford who support my endeavors every day and make both 'school and pool' wonderful places to be in Palo Alto."

Ledecky, who is remaining at Stanford to take classes as she pursues a professional career, holds a 3.99 GPA and was also named to the Pac-12 All-Academic first team. In the pool this year, she won three NCAA titles and earned four All-America honors. She also won three Pac-12 titles and was the Swimmer of the Meet at the conference championships. As a collegian, the Bethesda, Maryland native, broke American records 11 times, NCAA records 15 times and NCAA meet records six times.

"We are incredibly proud of Katie and everything she has accomplished," said Paul A. Violich Director of Women's Swimming Greg Meehan. "This is a tremendous honor and certainly well-deserved. Katie sets the standard in her pursuit of both academic and athletic excellence. Her work ethic is just as strong in the classroom as it is in the pool, and I'm happy all her efforts were recognized with this award."

In 2017-18, Stanford became the first school to reach 10 NCAA swimming and diving titles and claimed back-to-back championships for the first time since 1992-96. In a record-setting NCAA meet in March, the Cardinal became just the third school to sweep all five relays at the NCAA meet, and tied an all-time record with 13 event titles overall, last set 25 years ago by Stanford. The Cardinal had 16 different All-Americans combine for 56 All-America honors and five American records.