NCAA Inspiration Award - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The NCAA Inspiration Award is awarded to one of the following who is associated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association: a current or former varsity letter-winner, a coach, or an administrator. The award is given to an individual who "when confronted with a life-altering situation used perseverance, dedication and determination to overcome the event and now serves as a role model to give hope and inspiration to others in similar situations."

The Inspiration Award Award was first awarded in 2002. The recipients of the award are:

Year	Individual	Sport	Ref
2002	Maggie Maloy	Track & Cross country	Defiance College Defiance College Defiance College, located in Defiance, Ohio, USA, is an independent, co-educational liberal arts college affiliated with the United Church of Christ. The campus includes eighteen buildings and access to the Thoreau Wildlife Sanctuary....
2002	Sam Paneno	Football American football American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...	University of California, Davis University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis is a public teaching and research university established in 1905 and located in Davis, California, USA. Spanning over , the campus is the largest within the University of California system and third largest by enrollment...
2003	Diane Geppi-Aikens Diane Geppi-Aikens Diane Geppi-Aikens was an outstanding athlete, and later a women's lacrosse coach at Loyola College in Maryland. She is known for coaching Loyola College to national prominence, and later for her inspirational battle with cancer.-Athletic career:Beginning at a young age, Geppi was driven...	Lacrosse Lacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport of Native American origin played using a small rubber ball and a long-handled stick called a crosse or lacrosse stick, mainly played in the United States and Canada. It is a contact sport which requires padding. The head of the lacrosse stick is strung with loose mesh...	Loyola College in Maryland Loyola College in Maryland Loyola University Maryland is a Roman Catholic, Jesuit private university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Established as Loyola College in Maryland by John Early and eight other members of the Society of Jesus in 1852, it is one of 28 member institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges...
2003	Amanda Walton	Field hockey Field hockey Field Hockey, or Hockey, is a team sport in which a team of players attempts to score goals by hitting, pushing or flicking a ball into an opposing team's goal using sticks...	Yale University Yale University Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
2003	Todd Williams	Football	Florida State University Florida State University The Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...
2004	Heather Denison	Volleyball Volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules.The complete rules are extensive...	University of Portland University of Portland The University of Portland is a private Roman Catholic university located in Portland, Oregon. It is affiliated with the Congregation of Holy Cross and is the sister school of the University of Notre Dame. Founded in 1901, UP has a student body of about 3,600 students...
2004	Emily Miller	Soccer	University of Tennessee at Martin University of Tennessee at Martin The University of Tennessee at Martin is a campus in the University of Tennessee system. Other campuses include the flagship campus in Knoxville, the Chattanooga campus, the Center for the Health Sciences in Memphis, and the Space Institute in Tullahoma...
2004	Mike Nyeholt	Swimming Swimming (sport) Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...	University of Southern California University of Southern California The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
2005	Kaia Jergenson	Basketball Basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...	Lipscomb University Lipscomb University Lipscomb University is a private, coeducational, liberal arts university in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. It is affiliated with the Churches of Christ. The campus is located in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville between Belmont Boulevard to the west and Granny White Pike on the east...
2005	Michelle Thomas	Track and field	University of Oklahoma University of Oklahoma The University of Oklahoma is a coeducational public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two became the state of Oklahoma. the university had 29,931 students enrolled, most located at its...
2005	Macharia Yuot	Track and field	Widener University Widener University Widener University is a private, coeducational university located in Chester, Pennsylvania.Its main campus sits on 108 acres , just southwest of Philadelphia...
2006	Raul Altreche	Lacrosse	Amherst College Amherst College Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
2006	John Doar John Doar John Michael Doar is an American lawyer and currently senior counsel with the law firm Doar Rieck Kaley & Mack in New York....	Basketball	Princeton University Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
2006	Lois Taurman	Basketball, Volleyball, & Softball Softball Softball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of 10 to 14 players. It is a direct descendant of baseball although there are some key differences: softballs are larger than baseballs, and the pitches are thrown underhand rather than overhand...	Bellarmine University Bellarmine University Bellarmine University is an independent, private, Catholic university in Louisville, Kentucky. The liberal arts institution opened on October 3, 1950, as Bellarmine College, established by Archbishop John A. Floersh of the Archdiocese of Louisville and named after the Cardinal Saint Robert...
2007	David Denniston	Swimming	Auburn University Auburn University Auburn University is a public university located in Auburn, Alabama, United States. With more than 25,000 students and 1,200 faculty members, it is one of the largest universities in the state. Auburn was chartered on February 7, 1856, as the East Alabama Male College, a private liberal arts...
2008	Jim MacLaren	Football	Yale University
2009	Kelly Brush	Skiing Skiing Skiing is a recreational activity using skis as equipment for traveling over snow. Skis are used in conjunction with boots that connect to the ski with use of a binding....	Middlebury College Middlebury College Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college located in Middlebury, Vermont, USA. Founded in 1800, it is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges in the United States. Drawing 2,400 undergraduates from all 50 United States and over 70 countries, Middlebury offers 44 majors in the arts,...

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