UCLA’s Jackie Joyner Named NCAA’s Top Female Athlete

Jackie Joyner, an All-American as a basketball player for UCLA as well as a 1984 Olympic silver medalist in the heptathlon and the high scorer at the last NCAA track championships, was on Tuesday night awarded the Broderick Cup, emblematic of the top female collegiate athlete.

Joyner became the ninth winner of the annual award.

She came here as one of 10 winners of the Broderick Award, given each year to the top woman in each of 10 sports. She received the Cup from Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole, the speaker at the awards dinner at the Royal Orleans Hotel.

More than 350 attended the dinner, which would, more conveniently, have been held at the Hilton, site of the NCAA’s annual convention. But because of the commercial sponsorship of the award (named for Thomas Broderick, the first manufacturer of women’s athletic apparel) the NCAA would not allow it to be held at the same hotel.

Swimmer Tracy Caulkins, who won the Cup in 1982 and shared it with USC and Olympic basketball star Cheryl Miller last year, introduced the presentation, saying: “There is no other awards banquet like this. It’s comparable to winning the Heisman Trophy, but we have 10 women up here and there’s only one Heisman Trophy.”

Miller won the award for basketball again this year. Other award winners this year were Liz Masakayan, UCLA volleyball; Cathy Branta, Wisconsin cross country; Christy Morgan, Old Dominion field hockey; Deb Richard, Florida golf, Penny Hauschild, Alabama gymnastics; Denise Day Eckert, Nebraska softball; Mary T. Meagher, California swimming, and Linda Gates, Stanford tennis.