UCLA Honda Cup winners inspire future generations of women athletes

In a brightly lit hotel room, surrounded by cameras and posters, dozens of former collegiate athletes chatted with each other.

A former Alabama gymnast sat next to a Missouri State basketball legend at one table while a Texas swimmer took her turn recording a video segment and doing photo ops.

On the 40th anniversary of the Collegiate Women Sports Award, or the Honda Sports Award, pioneers, legends and champions from eight sports and 18 different schools celebrated the continued growth and development in women’s sports since the 1970s.

Track and field star Jackie Joyner-Kersee had planned to attend before a family emergency-called her home to Missouri. But for the three other former UCLA athletes in attendance, seeing other alumni made the ceremony feel like a homecoming.

Ann Meyers Drysdale, a shooting guard with the Bruins’ women’s basketball from 1974 to 1978, was the second winner of the Honda Cup back in 1978. Meyers Drysdale, who was the first woman to receive an athletic scholarship, took home the cup after leading her team to the AIAW national championship. But for the basketball icon, the legacy of winning the award wasn’t evident until later in her career.

“Athletes don’t appreciate (the cup) until they’re retired and out of college and have moved on with their lives,” Meyers Drysdale said. “But the impact they’ve made in their communities and in society has been really wonderful to watch.”

After college, Meyers Drysdale played professionally, including a stint with the Indiana Pacers, before stepping into the front office as the vice president of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and the president and general manager of the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury.

The first women’s basketball four-time All-American in history credits her experiences at UCLA with preparing her for the journey on and off court, pointing to coach John Wooden’s pyramid of success as setting the tone especially for female student-athletes.

“(Being an athlete) is life,” Meyers Drysdale said. “It’s about your work ethic, your determination, getting through adversity, learning how to fail and how to succeed, how to give back to others, teamwork, leadership.”

Years later, another young girl stepped her foot onto UCLA, a future legend in her sport who absorbed the same lessons Meyers Drysdale did nearly 20 years earlier.

Lisa Fernandez, a Long Beach, California native, chose to play softball for the Bruins, a program she said represented her and the things she believed in. The three-time Olympic gold medalist led her team to two national titles and two runner-up finishes from 1990 to 1993 en route to becoming the first softball player to win the Honda Cup.

But the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame pitcher said winning the cup, the equivalent of the Wooden Award in basketball and the Heisman in football, was more than a personal accomplishment – it transcended herself and her school to direct the limelight onto other aspiring female athletes.

“It’s about being able to get (sports) out in the forefront so that kids can actually say, ‘Look at these incredible women who play a sport and are yet female and can be great role models.’” Fernandez said. “It’s about giving kids an opportunity to learn so much about life through the sport that they play, and that’s truly what this is about in terms of the bigger picture.”

Fernandez’s accomplishments reached the next generation – two future softball players clinched the Honda Cup, including fellow UCLA Hall of Famer Natasha Watley.

Watley, an Orange County native, admired Fernandez, who was one of the biggest names in softball at the time. Like her idol, the four-time All-American broke barriers and set records during her softball career.

Playing shortstop and first base, Watley led the Bruins to the NCAA title in her senior season, the same year she took home the Honda Cup. After ending her career in 2003 as the program leader in career hits, triples, runs and stolen bases, Watley went on to become the first African-American female on the USA national softball team, winning gold and silver in the 2004 and 2008 Olympics.

Standing alongside Fernandez, Meyers Drysdale and other elite athletes, Watley glanced around the room, admiring the people around her.

“It’s an honor to be amongst such greatness,” Watley said. “Some of these women were people I looked up to – so just being in a room with women of this caliber, it puts everything in perspective.”

UCLA has four Honda Cups, trailing the University of Connecticut, which claimed its fifth cup that night. But no school has won in more sports than the Bruins –– a testament, Meyers Drysdale and Fernandez believe, to the school’s continued dedication to excellence.

“It says a lot about the athletes that come to UCLA,” Meyers Drysdale said. “It says a lot about these women and the strength that they have and the determination and dedication and how prideful we are at being Bruins.”