Duke's Lindsey Harding Named ACC Female Athlete of the Year

PINEHURST, NC ? Duke's Lindsey Harding, who sparked her Blue Devil basketball team to the first undefeated regular season in ACC history and was the first pick in the 2007 WNBA draft, and, Florida State sprinter Walter Dix, who led the Seminoles to a second consecutive national outdoor track-and-field championship with an individual performance unmatched in nearly 40 years are the 2006-07 Atlantic Coast Conference Male and Female Athletes of the Year.

Both honors were announced here today by ACC Commissioner John Swofford after voting by 77 members of the Atlantic Coast Sports Media Association.

Harding is recipient of the “Mary Garber Award,” named for the former Winston-Salem Journal reporter and a pioneer for women in the field of sports journalism. That award was established in 1990 to honor the league's top female athlete. Harding honor marks the second time over the last three years that a Blue Devil women's basketball student-athlete has won the Mary Garber Award as Alana Beard was selected in 2004.

Voting for the Garber Award was extremely close with Harding receiving 22 votes, one more than North Carolina's Heather O'Reilly, the national player of the year in soccer. Michelle Sikes, an All-America distance runner and Rhodes Scholar from Wake Forest, earned 13 votes, while 2005-06 Garber Award recipient Paula Infante, the national player of the year in field hockey, totaled eight votes.

Harding ended her outstanding career at Duke as one of the nation's premier point guards. A consensus first-team All-America, she received both the Naismith Award as the national player of the year and the inaugural National Defensive Player of the Year award from the WBCA. She also earned Kodak All-America, ACC Player of the Year, John R. Wooden All-America, ACC Defensive Player of the Year and received the Robin Roberts/WBCA Broadcasting Scholarship among many others.

Selected first overall by Phoenix before being traded to the Minnesota Lynx, Harding was leading all WNBA rookies in scoring and assists before suffering a torn anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee earlier this month.

Dix receives the “Anthony J. McKevlin Award” as the league's top male performer. That award, named in honor of the former sports editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, has been presented since the formation of the ACC in 1954.

Dix received 31 votes as the McKevlin Award winner. Georgia Tech All-America football player Calvin Johnson was second with 23 votes, while Matt Danowski of Duke, the national player of the year in lacrosse, was named on 12 ballots.
Dix, the 2007 Men's Track Athlete of the Year, won the 100 meters and 200 meters at the '07 NCAA Outdoor Championships after setting the American collegiate record in the 200 at the NCAA Regionals. He also was a member of FSU's national champion 4x100 meter relay team, thereby becoming the first individual to win national titles in all three events since John Carlos in 1969.

A junior, Dix is a 14-time All-American and seven-time NCAA champion.

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Additional Notes on the McKevlin and Garber Awards

Nominations for both awards were made by all 12 ACC institutions.

The nominees represented 16 different sports (7 men, 9 women).

21 of 24 nominees (11 men, 10 women) received All-America honors in 2006-07.

7 nominees were named National Player of the Year in their sport.

9 nominees won an individual national championship or played on a national championship team.