INDIANAPOLIS Recent graduate Meredith Brown (Medford, N.J./Shawnee) of the women’s basketball team was selected to represent Gettysburg College as a nominee for the 2021 NCAA Woman of the Year.
Rooted in Title IX, the NCAA Woman of the Year Award was established in 1991 to recognize graduating female student-athletes who have exhausted their eligibility and distinguished themselves in academics, athletics, service and leadership throughout their collegiate careers.
A forward on the basketball team, Brown became the first player in program history this past spring to earn Academic All-America honors by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). She was the second women’s basketball player named Academic All-District, joining former teammate Emma Dorshimer ’19. Brown was also a two-time All-Centennial Conference honoree, the 2019-20 CC Women’s Basketball Scholar-Athlete of the Year, two-time Academic All-Centennial Team member, and a three-time selection to the CC Academic Honor Roll.
Brown played a key role on the Bullets squad for three seasons. After coming off the bench for Gettysburg as a freshman, Brown went on to start in all but two games as a sophomore and junior. In her junior season, she finished second on the team in scoring (8.7 ppg), third in rebounds (4.9 rpg), and field goal percentage (46.2) while ranking fifth in the league in field goal percentage.
She finished with averages of 7.8 points and 5.2 rebounds per game in 84 appearances. Brown helped the Bullets reach the conference title game and a berth into the NCAA Division III Championship for three consecutive seasons, including winning the 2018 CC crown.
In the classroom, Brown shined as she made the Dean’s List each semester, was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and finished with an astonishing grade-point average of 3.99. Brown was also the recipient of the Biochemistry/Molecular Biology Award, the Gettysburg College Premedical Award, and the 2018 Foreign Language Scholar recipient. She graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and will be attending medical school at Temple University to pursue her MD.
Brown was named this year’s recipient of the Clair B., Mary E., and Constance Noerr (Baker) Memorial Award at Gettysburg, which is presented to a female senior on the basis of proficiency in athletics, scholarship, and character.
In the community, Brown was involved in numerous activities. She served as an emergency medical technician at the Adams Regional and Landisburg EMS, an on-call campus emergency medical technician, and an officer in the Gettysburg College EMS Club. Throughout her four years, Brown gained experience as a molecular genetics lab research assistant, ESL tutor, a cell biology laboratory peer-learning associate, Lincoln-Scholar first-year mentor, a bioinformatics lab research assistant, and spent a summer as an undergraduate research fellowship intern at Loma Linda University School of Medicine. Within athletics, she was on the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, Student-Athlete Impact Leader (SAIL), and was a member of the women’s basketball leadership team. Brown also created her own business called Meredith Elaine Art Acrylic Painting in 2017.
This year’s nominees represent all three NCAA divisions, including 251 nominees from Division I, 107 from Division II, and 177 from Division III. Nominees competed in 24 sports, with multisport student-athletes accounting for 141 of the nominees.
Brown was one of seven nominees from the Centennial Conference for NCAA Woman of the Year. Washington College’s Kailyn Brandt and Haverford’s were chosen to represent the conference for the national award.
This story was originally posted on the Gettysburg College Website.