July 11, 2011 WALNUT CREEK, Calif. - NCAA Champion pole vaulter Scott Roth and All-American tennis player Venise Chan were awarded the Pac-10 Tom Hansen Conference Medal, the Pac-12 office announced today. A Conference Medal is awarded annually to each member institution's outstanding senior male and female student-athlete based on the exhibition of the greatest combination of performance and achievement in scholarship, athletics and leadership. The Tom Hansen Conference Medal winners will be honored at the State Farm Pride of the Pac-12 Breakfast held in Los Angeles in conjunction with the Pacific Life Pac-12 Men's and Women's Basketball Tournaments next March. Roth and Chan were All-Americans both in the field of competition as well as in the classroom. Roth captured his third career NCAA title in his final collegiate meet, winning his first outdoor title on June 8 in Des Moines, Iowa to go with back-to-back indoor national titles. Roth's three national titles make him the second-most decorated Husky in terms of NCAA Championships, trailing only seven-time champion thrower Scott Neilson, and he racked up seven All-America honors. His school-record clearance of 18-9 ¼ remains the second-best mark by an American this year. Graduating with a 3.35 cumulative grade point average with a major in biology, Roth was named a Capital One Track & Field Academic All-American First Team selection this year. He also is one of ten semifinalists for the Bowerman Award, the highest honor in college track and field. The honors have come one after another for Chan at the end of her four-year run. She was recently named the Pac-10 Scholar Athlete of the Year for women's tennis, having graduated with a 3.66 grade point average with a business major focusing in marketing and entrepreneurship. She was named to the third team on the Capital One Academic All-America At-Large Team. Chan helped turned around the Husky women's tennis program, which made the NCAA tournament all four years of her career after missing out the prior two seasons. She made the NCAA Singles Championships all four years, advancing to the round of 16 the past two years and finishing both seasons ranked in the Top-20 in singles. The Hong Kong, China native compiled 101 singles victories, second-most in UW history, including a 22-1 record in dual matches this spring. She picked up her second straight All-America honor for singles this year, and added her first doubles All-America honor as well, as she and teammate Denise Dy advanced to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Doubles Championships. She and Dy were two of just 11 players nationally named All-Americans in both singles and doubles. The Tom Hansen Conference Medal was named in honor of Hansen, who served 26 years as commissioner of the Pac-10 Conference, retiring in June of 2009. The award was first named in his honor in 2008-09. 2010-11 Pac-10 Tom Hansen Conference Medal Winners |
