DE Assistant Sports Editor

SIUC associate athletics director Dr. Charlotte West was selected ahead of nine other candidates to receive the first-ever Honda Award of Merit at the NCAA Convention in Dallas on Jan. 8.

According to a Saluki Sports press release, West was chosen because of her significant, enduring contribution to women’s collegiate sports.

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West has been at SIUC for 38 years and is a major force in intercollegiate athletics at both the local and national levels. In this time, she has helped push women’s athletics to another level.

West, a past president of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, and a member the first women’s group to be inducted into the SIUC Hall of Fame in 1982, currently serves on four NCAA committees.

She was named Administrator of the Year by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association in 1985.

Despite past recognition she has received for her achievements, West said the Honda Award is special to her.

To be the first recipient of the Honda Award of Merit is something I’ll always remember, she said. It was an elegant evening, and I was surrounded by so many of my peers with whom I shared the honor.

SIUC athletics director Jim Hart said West has helped him a lot since he came to Carbondale, and her presence has greatly benefited SIUC’s athletic program.

(She has brought) stability, number one, in that she’s been through so many different managements, he said. But above all, knowledge not only about athletics administration. She’s a very worldly person.

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