LA JOLLA, Calif. – Former UC San Diego varsity women's rowing co-captain, Taylor Iantosca has been named a 2021 NCAA Woman of the Year nominee. She is one of four Colonial Athletic Association student-athletes nominated and one of 535 nationwide. The NCAA announced its full list of potential award winners on Thursday afternoon.
 
Established in 1991, the NCAA Woman of the Year award is rooted in Title IX and recognizes graduating female college athletes who have exhausted their NCAA eligibility and distinguished themselves in academics, athletics, service and leadership throughout their collegiate careers.
 
The nominees competed in 24 sports across all three NCAA divisions, including 251 nominees from Division I, 107 from Division II and 177 from Division III. 
 
Iantosca continues to add to her many accolades earned in her four years at UC San Diego. As a senior, she earned the Karen E. Reis Memorial Award for leadership and community service, was named a 2021 Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar by Diverse Issues in Higher Education and earned the Kelly Peterson Dedication Award. The co-captain led her team to one of the best seasons in program history, winning the Patty Wyatt Perpetual Cup and placing 3rd in the Varsity 8 race at the team's first ever Division I CAA Conference Championships.
 
The Rancho Santa Fe native was a standout in the classroom. Iantosca earned her bachelor's in engineering physics and entrepreneurship with a minor in innovation at Warren College, posting a 3.6 cumulative GPA. She will attend graduate school for electrical engineering beginning this fall at Stanford University.

Iantosca was an active member of the Triton community, serving as two-time fundraising chair for Triton Athletes' Council (TAC). With a theme to "Think Globally, Act Locally," she led TAC's fundraising efforts in making a local impact on the surrounding community. For Thanksgiving, she organized a virtual canned food drive to raise money for Triton Food Pantry and help students within the community struggling with food insecurities. She also helped with a Mental Health Awareness Month fundraiser where all proceeds went to UC San Diego's Counseling and Psychological Services. 

Iantosca is one of two UC San Diego scholar-athletes to receive the Woman of the Year nomination. Former softball first baseman Sherriah Harrington was also on the list of nominees.

For a full list of the 2021 NCAA Woman of the Year nominees and details on the next steps of the selection process, click here.

About UC San Diego Athletics
After two decades as one of the most successful programs in NCAA Division II, the UC San Diego intercollegiate athletics program began a new era in 2020 as a member of the Big West Conference in NCAA Division I. The 23-sport Tritons earned 30 team and nearly 150 individual national championships during its time in Divisions II and III and helped guide 1,400 scholar-athletes to All-America honors. A total of 83 Tritons have earned Academic All-America honors, while 38 have earned prestigious NCAA Post Graduate Scholarships. UC San Diego scholar-athletes exemplify the academic ideals of one of the world's preeminent institutions, graduating at an average rate of 91 percent, one of the highest rates among institutions at all divisions.