Bruin named finalist for highest soccer award

UCLA senior midfielder Christina DiMartino has been named a Missouri Athletic Club Hermann Trophy Finalist for the 2008 soccer season.

DiMartino, the Pac-10 Player of the Year, is one of three finalists for the award that honors the nation’s best college soccer player.

Joining DiMartino in St. Louis for the awards ceremony on Friday will be North Carolina’s Casey Nogueira and Notre Dame’s Kerri Hanks. Nogueira led the National Champion Tar Heels in goals this season with 25 and was the College Cup Offensive MVP. Hanks won the MAC Hermann Trophy in 2006 as a sophomore and was Big East Offensive Player of the year in 2008 with 20 goals and 15 assists.

The winner of the award will be announced on Friday around 4 p.m.

“It’s a great honor to be one of the finalists,” DiMartino said. “To be able to even be on the watch list at the beginning of the season is an honor. I’m against two other great soccer players, Kerri Hanks and Casey (Nogueira), and I’m just happy to be on the same level as them.”

As a senior in 2008, DiMartino led UCLA to an undefeated regular season and a trip to the national semifinal, where the Bruins fell to Nogueira’s Tar Heels. Hanks and her Notre Dame squad would lose to UNC in the national championship game.

DiMartino scored six goals and had six assists in 2008, including two game-winning goals, one that came against the then-No. 2 Stanford Cardinal.

DiMartino’s latest accolade comes toward the end of an impressive career. DiMartino has been integral to UCLA’s last four runs to the College Cup, and has been named to the Pac-10 First Team three times.

“I think it’s very deserving,” UCLA coach Jill Ellis said. “Christina is one of the top players in the college game and deserving of being in the final group with an outstanding group of players. I’m excited for her, and I’m happy that she won the Pac-10 Player of the Year. Oftentimes midfielders and defenders are not recognized because a lot of times it is about statistics.”

DiMartino is the second Bruin in the last two years to be named a finalist for the award. In 2007, junior forward Lauren Cheney was honored as a finalist.

“It’s a tremendous honor for the program,” Ellis said. “It does say a lot about the type of players we have in our program and also the development of our players.”

DiMartino said that the quality of the other players and the coaches helped her play at the top of her game.

“I have to give all the credit to these girls, especially this season, for bringing the best out of me,” she said.

DiMartino added that while she would love to win the award to cap off her career, it is her four-year experience that she will remember most.

“It’d be awesome to win the award, but even if not, it’s not a big deal. The experience I had at UCLA, these four years, and just this season with the girls and the coaches is just something I will never forget. It made me the soccer player I am today.”

DiMartino will enter the Women’s Professional Soccer League draft Jan. 16.

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