Kayla Hoffman adds Southeastern Conference (SEC) Female Athlete of the Year Award to her collection
NCAA athlete Kayla Hoffman recently received the Female Athlete of the Year award from the Southeastern Conference. The honour was bestowed on her at the Southeastern Conference Legends Dinner, held in Atlanta.
For Hoffman, this is not the first award she has collected in 2011. Earlier this year, she received the 2012 NCAA Today’s Top VIII award, as well as the Honda Award, which acknowledges the country’s top gymnast.
In the same year she was also dubbed the 2011 Capital One/CoSIDA Academic All-American of the year.
The World qualifier studied at the University of Alabama, where she captained the women’s gymnastics team, Crimson Tide, in her final year.
The 23-year-old, New Jersey native, granted Crimson Tide its first ‘triple crown’ since 1988, as she directed her team to the 2011 NCAA Championships, NCAA Regional Championships and Southeastern Conference Championships.
She also brought the floor title home in April from the Women's Collegiate Gymnastics National Championships.
Before she joined the University of Alabama, Hoffman had met her academic targets through home-schooling.
It was hence a precautionary move to choose retirement from elite gymnastics so as to focus on her grades – a right choice as Hoffman hit a flawless 4.0 GPA in her first semester.
Her continuing stellar academic performance in human development and family studies earned her NCAA and Southeastern Conference Postgraduate Scholarships.
In January 2008, she began competing as an NCAA gymnast and in her first tournament against Illinois, she secured a silver medal for Alabama in the all-around.
Her coach, Sarah Patterson, who showed her support by attending the banquet, was all but crying with parental pride.
“When Kayla first came to Alabama she was a young girl. Watching her up on that podium tonight as she addressed the leaders of this conference, I was filled with such amazing pride at the strong, confident, accomplished woman she has become,” Patterson said.
Also present at the ceremony were Mal Moore (Alabama Director of Athletics), Shane Lyons (Deputy Athletics Director) and Marie Robins (Senior Woman Administrator/Associate Athletics Director).
Hoffman was graciously ecstatic at becoming the first senior ever to win the Southeastern Conference Gymnast of the Year as well as the Southeastern Conference Gymnastics Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
“This moment is not mine alone. It also belongs to each of my teammates, I am here because of them. Together, through the tears and the victories, the toughest practices and the brightest times in the spotlight, we became champions. I share this moment with
all of them,” she said.
Hoffman is only the sixth athlete from Alabama to have earned this honour. The Legends Dinner was indeed a memorable evening for Hoffman and all her supporters as she tucked another feather in her cap.
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