All-Time Golden Wings Award Winners
By Mike Lehman, TTU Sports Information
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. – Tennessee Tech Athletics continued its recognition of the best and brightest of its more than 300 student-athletes by releasing six more winners of its 2020 Golden Wings Awards.
On Friday, it was announced that the Community Service Award winner was the softball team. Five more Golden Eagle Award winners were released as well, spanning three winter sports programs including men's basketball, women's basketball and track & field, as well as the cheer and dance teams.
The softball team was the clear winner of the 2020 Community Service Award, which recognized teams for their finish in a t-shirt/clothing collection competition sponsored by the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC). It marked the third time the softball team earned the honor in five years.
Making it an easy decision, the softball program collected 746 items of clothing for donation, three times the amount of the next closest team. That also accounted for 33.9 items per team member on the squad, also more than three times more than the second-place program.
An honor created by members of the Tennessee Tech SAAC, a Golden Eagle Award is presented to each of Tech's 13 teams (indoor and outdoor track & field are combined), as well as the Golden Eagle cheer and dance teams. The teams each vote to select one member of the roster whom they would hold up with pride to represent the team, who is always positive and giving 110 percent, supporting their teammates, win or lose, and serving as the "heart" of the team, no matter whether they were a star or a seldom-used backup.
Senior Cade Crosland was selected as the men's basketball team's Golden Eagle Award winner, inspiring his teammates and even coaches with his work ethic while playing in 29 of the team's 31 games. He dropped a career-high 21 points while hitting a late, game-winning 3-pointer to beat Jacksonville State late in the 2019-20 campaign.
Selected by the Tennessee Tech cheer squad as their Golden Eagle Award recipient was December graduate Jessica Garland. The TTU dance team picked Haley Kramer as their Golden Eagle Award winner.
Senior Akia Harris was the choice for the Golden Eagle Award for the women's basketball team after completing her fourth and final year in a Tech uniform. The point guard averaged 7.1 points and 3.9 rebounds while leading the Ohio Valley Conference with 4.7 assists per game. The floor general led the purple and gold with 30.5 minutes of action per game.
The Golden Eagle Award winner for the track & field teams (one winner is selected for both indoor and outdoor), was senior Lisa Wickham. Named the OVC's Female Track Athlete of the Week three times during the indoor campaign, Wickham shattered the league's record in the 60-meters, finishing with a time of 7.27 seconds at the OVC Championships.
The Golden Wings Awards, which enters its fifth year, is an end-of-the-year award ceremony for the Tennessee Tech University student-athletes to honor and celebrate their academic and athletic accomplishments over the past complete seasons.
Due to the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent cancellation of the remainder of campus activities for the 2019-20 academic year, the annual awards show was also canceled. The choice was made to still honor the student-athletes for their accomplishments, however, as each competitive season drawn from to determine the honors had been completed.
The timeframe of the awards period is the current season (2019-20 in this instance) except for sports that compete in the spring, including baseball, softball, outdoor track & field, men's golf, women's golf and tennis. With those sports typically competing with a large portion of their seasons still left at the time of the awards show, the previous campaigns (2018-19 in this instance) are recognized. The Man and Woman of the Year awards encompass the 2019-20 period for all sports.
Prior to the 2019 Golden Wings Awards, men's golf, women's golf and tennis were included from their current season, but due to scheduling conflicts and to allow a more complete campaign from which to gather nominees, the three sports were added to the rest of the spring sports in using its previous season for consideration.
Prior to the first Golden Wings Awards show, Tennessee Tech Athletics annually presented four awards to deserving student-athletes, including Male Athlete of the Year, Female Athlete of the Year, Man of the Year and Woman of the Year. The first honor established, for the 1990-91 academic year, was the Woman of the Year Award, coinciding with the first NCAA Woman of the Year Award. Two years later, in 1992-93, Tech established its Man of the Year Award. Both the Male Athlete of the Year and Female Athlete of the Year honors were added for the 1993-94 academic year. The four honors were officially adopted into the Golden Wings Awards, including criteria, for the 2016-17 academic year and all previous winners can also be found in the all-time list below.
