• All-Time OVC Female Athlete of the Year Award Winners
BRENTWOOD, Tenn. – Tennessee State senior
Amber Hughes has been selected as the Ohio Valley Conference Female Athlete of the Year for 2016-17 in voting by the league’s athletics directors and sports information directors.
Hughes will receive her award at the League’s annual Honors Brunch on June 2 in Nashville. The Male Athlete of the Year will be announced on Thursday.
Hughes dominated track and field in the OVC this season, sweeping both the OVC Indoor Track Athlete of the Year and Indoor Field Athlete of the Year awards for the second-straight season; she is the only athlete in OVC history to win both of those awards in the same year. She was also named OVC Outdoor Field Athlete of the Year as well as sweeping the OVC Female Athlete of the Championship at each the Indoor and Outdoor championship.
At the recently completed OVC Outdoor Championship, she established new OVC records in the triple jump and 100m hurdles, while also taking first place in the long jump and 4x400 relay and finishing third in the 200 meters.
During the Indoor season she was named a second-team All-American in the triple jump after finishing 11th at the NCAA Championship; it marked her fourth career All-American honor. At the OVC Indoor Championship she set a new OVC record in the 60-meter hurdles, while also winning the 60-meter dash, the long jump and triple jump and taking second place in the 200 meters and the 4x400 relay.
For her career Hughes has won 26 individual OVC gold medals.
During the year she was named OVC Athlete of the Week eight times.
This weekend she will compete at the NCAA East Preliminaries in Lexington, Kentucky in the triple jump and 100 meter hurdles.
Hughes is the second-straight Tennessee State student-athlete to be named OVC Female Athlete of the Year, following Clairwin Dameus who won the award last year.
Other nominees for the award included Austin Peay senior basketball center Tearra Banks, Belmont sophomore basketball guard Darby Maggard, Eastern Illinois senior tennis athlete Kelly Iden, Eastern Kentucky junior distance runner Charlotte Imer, Jacksonville State junior pitcher Whitney Gillespie, Morehead State senior golfer Anna Magnusson, Murray State junior golfer Moa Folke, SIUE senior pitcher Haley Chambers-Book, Tennessee Tech sophomore soccer player Kari Naerdemann and UT Martin distance runner Ann Asipan.
The OVC first awarded a Female Athlete of the Year in 1981.