Syracuse, N.Y. – Recent Le Moyne College graduate Olivia McEntee (Cazenovia, N.Y./Cazenovia) of the women's lacrosse team has been named the College's nominee for the NCAA Woman of the Year Award, as announced recently by the NCAA.

Established in 1991, the NCAA Woman of the Year award is rooted in Title IX and recognizes graduating female college athletes who have exhausted their NCAA eligibility and distinguished themselves in academics, athletics, service and leadership throughout their collegiate careers.

McEntee, a biology major, is one of nine nominees from the Northeast-10 Conference and is among 107 nominees from Division II. Over the NCAA's three divisions, 535 female student-athletes were nominated for this year's award.

Next, conferences will select up to two nominees each from their pool of member school nominees. All nominees who compete in a sport not sponsored by their school's primary conference, as well as associate conference nominees and independent nominees, will be considered by a selection committee. Then, the Woman of the Year selection committee, made up of representatives from the NCAA membership, will choose 10 women from each division to make up the Top 30.
 
The selection committee will determine the top three honorees in each division from the Top 30, and the nine finalists will be announced this fall. From those nine finalists, the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics will choose the 2021 NCAA Woman of the Year later this fall.

McEntee collected her third career IWLCA All-America honor in early June and her second straight First Team accolades. In May, she was selected to the IWLCA East Region First Team and the Northeast-10 Conference All-Conference First Team for the third consecutive year. A starter in 13 of 14 games played this year, she led the Northeast-10 Conference's best defense with 32 ground balls, while adding a career-high 54 draw controls and 19 caused turnovers. She ranked fourth in the NE10 in draw controls and fifth in ground balls. She caused multiple turnovers in six games and picked up multiple ground balls in 10 games, including a career high-tying six against New Haven on May 3, and recorded multiple draw controls in each of the last 12 games, including a career-best nine at Pace on April 24.

For her career, she registered 131 ground balls, 101 caused turnovers and 82 draw controls as a starter in 70 of her 81 games played (tied for the third-most in the program's history). She graduated as one of only three players in the program's history to accumulate over 100 caused turnovers. She is tied for 13th in the program's history in ground balls and tallied the seventh-most since 2000. Her 82 draw controls are the 15th-most in the program's history.

Off the field, she participated in several community service projects. She spent time at the Samaritan Center in Syracuse making and serving meals; helped organize, decorate, recruit walkers and donors and walked in the VA Hospital Sexual Assault Awareness Walk to raise awareness for sexual assault victims; made homemade wigs out of yarn and wrote positive notes for children receiving chemotherapy and battling pediatric cancer for the Magic Yarn Project; and visited and brought toys to children experiencing orthopedic and neuromuscular conditions and/or injuries at the Shriner's Hospital for Children.