CLEVELAND – The North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) announced Wednesday that recent Kenyon College graduate Haley Townsend was named the recipient of the 2016 Pam Smith Award. The swimmer from Greenwood, Indiana became Kenyon's fourth student-athlete to earn the award since it was first presented in 2008.

The NCAC award, named in honor of Wittenberg University's former women's basketball head coach and associate director of athletics, recognizes one female senior who distinguished herself throughout her collegiate career in the areas of academic achievement, athletics excellence, service and leadership. As the winner of the award, Townsend will be moved forward as the conference's nominee for NCAA Woman of the Year consideration.

At the 2016 NCAA Division III Swimming and Diving Championship, she logged a fifth-place finish as a part of Kenyon's 400-yard medley relay team. That result gave Townsend, a four-year NCAA qualifier, a career total of 16 All-America swims and it also helped steer the Ladies to a national runner-up spot for the third time in the last four years.

Townsend had a dozen career top-ten swims in national championship competition, but her most memorable was claiming the 2013 event title as a freshman on the Ladies' 400-yard medley relay team, a quartet that still holds the national record time of 3:40.13. In additional to that mark, Townsend maintains her name on the Kenyon record board for the 400-yard freestyle relay (3:22.47) and the 800-yard freestyle relay (7:20.84).

She graduated summa cum laude as an International Studies major with a 3.95 grade point average and recently accepted a J. William Fulbright Fellowship to work as an English teaching assistant in Turkey for the upcoming academic year. The trip overseas won't be her first. The fall semester of her junior year was spent in Rabat, Morocco, where she taught English and attended the Global Entrepreneurship Summit. When she returned, she followed up with a summer internship in Washington, D.C., working for the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations and the Middle East Policy Council.

"Haley is a spectacular person who, through her every action, makes those around her better," head coach Jess Book said. "I'm honored to have had the chance to coach her. In her four years at Kenyon she made this team better – both in the water with her performances, and even more importantly in the locker room with her strength of character."

The Ladies' only three-time first-team selection on the College Sports Information Directors of America Academic All-America Division III At-Large Team, Townsend was also tabbed a 2014 winner of the NCAA's Elite 89 trophy, annually given to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative grade point average participating at the championship site.

Townsend was a constant on Kenyon's Merit List and was a three-time member of the NCAC Academic Honor Roll. She was elected to Kenyon's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in 2016, she earned the College's 2016 International Studies Award and was awarded the Elmer A. Graham Endowed Scholarship in 2015 as Kenyon's most outstanding junior. At the conclusion of her senior season, she was awarded an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship.

While on campus, Townsend was nominated to the Senior Class Committee, serving as a counselor for first-year students during freshman orientation and volunteering in the Student Accessibility and Support Services Office. She worked with the Middle East Student Association, the Environmental Campus Organization and the Kenyon Outdoors Club. She also participated in programs like Step UP!, Girls and Women in Sports Day, Emerging Leaders Institute and Relay for Life.

Her outreach stretched into the local community, as well. She was a volunteer tutor at the Knox County Learning Center and a volunteer instructor during a Kenyon swim clinic for the Knox County community.

Previous Pam Smith award-winners from Kenyon include lacrosse standout Leah Sack (2013) and swimmers Alisa Vereshchagin (2012) and Tracy Menzel (2009).