Andree Pickens Named SEC's Top Female Athlete
7/1/2002 12:00:00 AM | Gymnastics
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Two-time NCAA Champion Andre? Pickens was named the 2002 Southeastern Conference Female Athlete of the Year by a vote of the league’s athletics directors.
“We are extremely proud that the conference athletics directors join the Alabama family in recognizing the high standard of excellence that Andree' maintained this season,” Alabama Athletics Director Mal Moore said. “With this award, not only is she acknowledged as the conference's best, but she joins a very elite group among Alabama's storied athletic history. She is a great ambassador for the Crimson Tide and represents all the qualities we cherish in a student-athlete. We are very proud of her.”
Pickens is the seventh Alabama athlete to earn SEC Athlete of the Year and the first since fellow gymnast Dee Foster in 1990. The Houston, Texas native is the third Crimson Tide gymnast to earn the honor, joining Tide legends Penney Hauschild (1985) and Foster. Of the four conference gymnasts that have earned the award since its inception, three competed for Alabama.
“Of course we’re thrilled for Andre?,” Alabama head coach Sarah Patterson said. “To be judged the top athlete in the nation’s best conference says a tremendous amount about Andre?. Her accomplishments are a result of an incredible work ethic, talent and a vivacious attitude. She is very deserving to join this elite company of men and women.”
As the captain of the Alabama gymnastics team, Andree’ Pickens led the Crimson Tide to the 2002 National Championship. In her three years of NCAA Championship competition, Pickens earned 14 All-American honors and two individual titles (Pickens was injured for the 2001 NCAA Championships). She is the only gymnast in NCAA history to earn five All-American honors in two different seasons (1999 & 2002).
Pickens has also been honored nationally. She was named the 2002 Honda Award for Gymnastics winner; the 2002 NCAA Regional Gymnast of the Year, an honor she has earned four times; and the 2002 American Award winner, a national award given annually to the senior gymnast who best represents the ideal combination of athleticism, academic excellence and civic responsibility.
Selected as the SEC Gymnast of the Year for an unprecedented third consecutive year, Pickens won the all-around, vault, bars and balance beam titles at the 2002 SEC Gymnastics Championships. She is the first SEC gymnast to earn four individual league titles in the same year.
Pickens is currently in the midst of the University of Virginia’s six-week Medical Academic Advancement Program, designed to prepare students for careers in medicine. She will return to Tuscaloosa in the fall to complete her biology degree.
Tide women have now won the award four times, which ties Alabama for the best total with Florida and Tennessee. Alabama’s previous SEC Athletes of the Year are: 1979 - Reggie King (basketball); 1985 - Hauschild (gymnastics); 1987 - Cornelius Bennett (football) and Lillie Leatherwood (track and field); 1989 – Derrick Thomas (football); 1990 - Foster (gymnastics).
