Centennial Conference NCAA Woman of the Year Archive
LANCASTER, Pa. -- The Swarthmore volleyball duo of Mehra den Braven and Emma Morgan-Bennett have been selected as the Centennial Conference nominees for the 2020 NCAA Woman of the Year award. The Centennial nominees for NCAA Woman of the Year are selected annually by the conference Senior Woman Administrators.
The Garnet tandem were chosen from among a group of 10 candidates submitted by CC member institutions. Den Braven and Morgan-Bennett are the eighth and ninth Swarthmore student-athletes to receive the CC's nomination for NCAA Woman of the Year. They join Cait Mullarkey (2009), Katie Lytle (2014), Aarti Rao (2014), Supriya Davis (2015), Tess Wei (2017), Sarah Wallace (2018), and Marin McCoy (2019) as conference representatives from Swarthmore, which has compiled more nominees than any other school in the conference.
Now in its 30th year, the Woman of the Year award honors graduating female college athletes who have exhausted their eligibility and distinguished themselves throughout their collegiate careers in academics, athletics, service, and leadership. Every year, the NCAA encourages each member college and university to honor its top one or two graduating female student-athletes by submitting their names for consideration for the Woman of the Year award.
To be eligible, a nominee must have competed and earned a varsity letter in an NCAA-sponsored sport, must have completed eligibility in her primary sport, and must have earned her undergraduate degree by Summer 2020. Click here for more information on the award and a list of previous winners.
Teammates for the past four years, den Braven and Morgan-Bennett led the Garnet volleyball team to new heights throughout their careers. From 2016-19, Swarthmore compiled an 81-35 (.698) overall record and 29-11 (.725) conference record while reaching four CC semifinals and two championship matches. The Garnet also found success at the national and regional levels, headlined by an NCAA regional title and trip to the Elite Eight in 2017, along with the program's highest-ever national ranking (#18) achieved in November 2017. In 2016, the duo helped Swarthmore tie the program record with 27 wins and secure the ECAC Championship.
An economics major from Santa Clara, Calif., den Braven graduated from Swarthmore this spring with a 3.94 cumulative grade point average. She received numerous academic awards throughout her career, including thrice earning Academic All-District honors from the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA), which recognizes the top student-athletes based on their accomplishments on the court and in the classroom. She was also named to the Philadelphia Inquirer Academic All-Area Volleyball Team three times, including being named All-Area Performer of the Year in 2017. At the conference level, den Braven was a three-time member of the Academic All-Centennial team and the CC Academic Honor Roll.
As an outside hitter, den Braven also excelled on the court, highlighted by a pair of American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) All-America Honorable Mention awards along with AVCA All-Region honors in 2017 and 2018. She also collected All-CC accolades four times, twice landing on the first team (2017, 2018) and twice on the second team (2016, 2019). She ranks fifth all-time in the Swarthmore record book in career kills (1,112) and sixth in attack attempts (3,209).
While den Braven completed a stellar career on the court and in the classroom at Swarthmore, she also left an indelible mark on her campus and community, taking an active role in contributing to the various communities around Swarthmore. At SCI Chester, a local medium-security prison, she facilitated community workshops and devised projects with incarcerated and nonincarcerated individuals. At CADES, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of children and adults with intellectual & physical disabilities, she assisted children with completing art projects. At Pathways PA, she volunteered to provide tax help to low-income households, conducting interviews and completing tax returns. Experience with these community-based initiatives has led her to take up the position of Reentry Housing AmeriCorps VISTA in Philadelphia to support the community-led initiatives creating a better pathway home for individuals. Den Braven also worked as a behavioral economics research assistant with a professor at Swarthmore. In this role, she coordinated and guided four other students and collaborated with local policymarkers to evaluate initiatives focused on the needs of city residents.
A medical anthropology major from New York City, Morgan-Bennett graduated this spring with a 3.92 cumulative grade point average. She boasts an extensive list of academic honors at the campus, conference, regional and national levels. She was recently named a 2020 Marshall Scholar, one of just 46 students from the United States to receive the prestigious honor. Marshall Scholars are invited to pursue graduate studies in the United Kingdom, where Morgan-Bennett will pursue a master of arts degree in screen documentary from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2020 and then continue to pursue a doctorate in social policy and intervention from Oxford University. She won the Oak and Ivy Award, given annually to the Swarthmore graduating senior who displays outstanding scholarship, contributions to community, and leadership. Additionally, she won multiple awards for her scholarly thesis titled "Revolutionary Mamas: Radical Doulas and the Black Maternal Mortality Crisis." She won both the Mansfield-Wefald thesis competition, presented by the Telluride Association, and the William and Sophie Bramson award from the Swarthmore Sociology and Anthropology Department. Additional academic honors collected by Morgan-Bennett include earning Phi Beta Kappa and High Honors as a graduating senior, the J. Roland Pennock Fellowship in Public Affairs in 2019, being named a Mellon Mays Scholar, the Telluride Association's Yarrow Award, and receiving the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility's Pilot Project. In the realm of college athletics, she collected Philadelphia Inquirer Academic All-Area Team (2019), Academic All-Centennial (2018 & 2019) and CC Academic Honor Roll (2017, 2018, 2019) honors for her work in the classroom.
As a middle blocker for the Garnet, Morgan-Bennett secured AVCA All-America Honorable Mention laurels in 2018. She is a two-time AVCA All-Region pick (2018, 2019) and two-time All-Centennial Second Team selection (2018, 2019). She finished her career ranked second in Garnet history in both total blocks (318) and assist blocks (238), and also ranks fourth all-time in solo blocks (80). Her 318 total blocks ranks 22nd all-time in the CC career record book.
Morgan-Bennett was also a leader on campus and the Swarthmore community. She founded Athletics for Diversity and Inclusion (ADI), a campus-wide coalition that centralizes conversations surrounding athletes' identities. This coalition hosts two representatives from every team on campus and organizes campus-wide events, educational programs, and community service throughout the year. With help from ADI, she was awarded Swarthmore's William J. Cooper Foundation Grant, which supports topical events featuring eminent guests in their fields of expertise. Morgan-Bennett helped spearhead an event titled "Beyond The Field: Activism, Athletics, and Empowerment in the Modern Political Era," a teach-in that occurred in February 2020 and featured former Eagles' Super Bowl champion, All-Pro, and anti-incarceration activist, Malcolm Jenkins. Through student-panels and a moderated conversation with Jenkins that drew over 600 students and community members, Swarthmore engaged in an examination of the intersections between political dissent and athletic capital.
Morgan-Bennett was also the Co-President of SwatDoulas from 2018-20, which is a club that provides education and doula training on reproductive health and justice. As the Co-founder and Executive Director of Eat at the Table Theatre Company (E.A.T.T.), she created a youth theater company for young actors of color to explore and celebrate race through repurposed and original theater pieces. Additional exploits of Morgan-Bennett include serving on Swarthmore President Valerie Smith's hiring committee for its Title IX coordinator, participating as a keynote panelist at the NCAA Convention on the topic of NCAA's Advocates of Change: Student-Athlete Activism and Expression in the 21st Century, and working as a summer research intern for the National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW).
The NCAA Woman of the Year selection committee identifies the Top 30 – 10 from each division – and from there selects three finalists from each division. The top 30 honorees will be announced in September, and the 2020 NCAA Woman of the Year will be announced later in the fall.