She’s not a participant in a high profile sport but what she’s done remains incredible. If any football or basketball player at the University of Kentucky had piled up the honors that swimmer Asia Seidt has he would be overwhelmed with fan, media and likely endorsement opportunities. Seidt has been named to the 2020 NCAA Woman of the Year Top 30 list and is one of only 10 Division I athletes on the list that includes female student-athletes from each of the three NCAA divisions.
The selection committee will announce the nine finalists, including three women from each division, in mid-October and hopefully Seidt is going to be one of those. She’s already made the cut from the original 605 nominations in three divisions to the final 30.
So how good is Seidt?
She earned 21 All-American honors and 15 Southeastern Conference championship medals in four years. She had eight NCAA Championship podium finishes. She won one USA Swimming Summer Nationals gold medal and one World University Games silver medal.
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Seidt was the 2019 ELITE 90 recipient, 2019 Arthur Ashe Female Sports Scholar of the Year recipient and the 2020 H. Boyd McWhorter Scholar-Athlete of the Year recipient.
Bottom line, she has more All-America honors, NCAA Championship podium finishes, SEC Championship medals and All-SEC First Team selections than any UK swimmer or diver, man or woman, that has come before her.
If that’s not enough, she did all that while maintaining a perfect 4.0 grade-point average and has recently started UK’s Physical Therapy Graduate Program.
She’s the poster woman for the meaning of a student-athlete and having a chance to get to know her in a small way and follow her career truly has been rewarding. Now I am just hoping she caps her collegiate athletics career by being named NCAA Woman of the Year.
