INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – The NCAA announced Tuesday that six former college athletes will receive the NCAA Silver Anniversary Award in recognition of their collegiate and professional achievements. One of those six is Dr. Carla Ainsworth, a 1995 Kenyon College graduate and national championship swimmer.
The Silver Anniversary Award annually recognizes distinguished individuals on the 25th anniversary of the conclusion of their college athletics careers. Representatives of NCAA member schools and conferences, along with a panel of former student-athletes, select each year's recipients.
In addition to Ainsworth, the 2020 recipients are Stewart Cink, Darren Eales, Rebecca Lobo, Jenny Thompson and Adam Vinatieri. The NCAA will recognize the honorees at the Honors Celebration during the 2020 NCAA Convention on January 22 in Anaheim, California.
In four years of swimming competition at Kenyon, Ainsworth won 26 NCAA Division III national titles and was the first woman in Division III history to win four consecutive titles in the 200-yard freestyle. She also won four consecutive titles in the 100-yard freestyle. She was a 28-time All-American and the first three-time NCAA Division III Swimmer of the Year. Additionally, Ainsworth set 15 Division III championship records.
In conference competition, she collected 15 championship event titles and twice was named the North Coast Athletic Conference Swimmer of the Year. Ainsworth, who double majored in chemistry and history while captaining the swim team, earned four Academic All-America honors, and after graduation received an NCAA Walter Byers Postgraduate Scholarship. She was also winner of the 1994 Honda Sports Award as the Division III Woman Athlete of the Year.
She went on to earn her medical doctorate at Washington University in St. Louis and later completed a master's degree in public health with a focus on maternal and child health at University of California, Berkeley.
Ainsworth is a family physician with additional certification in geriatrics, as well as hospice and palliative medicine. A former chief of the department of family medicine at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, Ainsworth is a practice medical director for Iora Primary Care, where she focuses on comprehensive primary care for older adults, and a clinical faculty member at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
Ainsworth currently serves on the boards of directors for the Washington Academy of Family Physicians Foundation and the King County Academy of Family Physicians, where she works to transform health care by promoting the ideals of family medicine.
