July 30, 2009

GREENSBORO, N.C. - North Carolina's Casey Nogueira, who led her Tar Heel women's soccer team to a national title while earning national player of the year honors, and NC State golfer Matt Hill, the 2009 NCAA individual champion, and are the 2008-09 Atlantic Coast Conference Female and Male Athletes of the Year.

Nogueira is recipient of the Mary Garber Award, named for the former Winston-Salem Journal reporter and a pioneer for women in the field of sports journalism. That award was established in 1990 to honor the league's top female athlete. Hill receives the Anthony J. McKevlin Award as the league's top male performer. That award, named in honor of the former sports editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, has been presented since the formation of the ACC in 1954.

The two awards were determined in voting by 49 members of the Atlantic Coast Sports Media Association from a group of 24 nominees (12 male, 12 female from ACC member schools) that included 16 first-team All-Americas, four national players of the year and 11 individuals who won individual NCAA championships or led their teams to national crowns.

Nogueira, a rising senior from Raleigh, N.C., is the first UNC woman to win the Mary Garber Award since Cindy Parlow, also a soccer player, was honored in 1999. She led the nation this past fall with 25 goals, including both scores in the Tar Heels' 2-1 win over Notre Dame in the 2008 NCAA finals. Seven of her goals were game-winners during UNC's 25-1-2 season that ended with the school's 20th national championship in the past 28 years. She was a consensus first-team All-America and winner of five national player of the year awards.

Nogueira finished first in Garber Award balloting with 18 votes to top a strong field of nominees.

Duke freshman tennis player Mallory Cecil, who led the Blue Devils to a national championship while also winning the individual NCAA title, received 13 votes as runner-up for the top women's honor. Kim Williams of Florida State, the 2009 NCAA champion in the indoor triple jump and outdoor triple jump and long jump, was named on seven ballots.

Hill is the first golfer ever to receive the McKevlin Award. In addition to becoming the Wolfpack's first NCAA golf champion, he is just the second golfer in NCAA history to win conference, regional and national titles in the same year. The other was Tiger Woods in 1996.

A rising junior from Brights Grove, Ontario, Hill won eight tournaments this past year, easily eclipsing the previous ACC record of five. His 70.1 stroke average was the best in the country and helped him achieve consensus national player of the year honors.

Hill received 20 votes as the McKevlin Award winner. Florida State football player Myron Rolle, who earned All-America honors as a defensive back while also being named a Rhodes Scholar, was second in the balloting with nine votes.