SAINT JOSEPH, Minn. – Junior Fiona Smith of the College of Saint Benedict Track and Field/Cross Country Team has been named one of 26 college finalists for the 2023 Coach Wooden Citizenship Cup Award in an announcement today by the Athletes for a Better World.

Smith, a mathematics major from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, was the only MIAC student-athlete to make the finalist stage of the award. Smith, who is the most decorated student-athlete in school history with seven All-American honors and a CSC Academic All-American honor, recently finished as national runner-up at the NCAA DIII Cross Country Championship.

The announcement of the one male and one female College Cup recipients will be made during the first week of January, 2023. Planning will then commence for the April 27, 2023 evening ceremony at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta.
 
John Wooden, one of the greatest coaches and positive role models in the history of the NCAA, gave Athletes for a Better World (ABW) permission to present an award in his name. The Coach Wooden Citizenship Cup is presented to six distinguished athletes from any sport – male/female high school, male/female intercollegiate, and male/female professional – who best display character, teamwork, and citizenship, the attributes Athletes for a Better World deems central to transforming individuals, sport, and society.  The award establishes the recipients as athletes of excellence both on and off the field, role models both as performers and persons, the most important and distinctive honor athletes can achieve.
 
Since 2016, ABW and The National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA) have formed a partnership to recognize a male and female student-athlete as national scholarship winners and recipients of the Coach Wooden Citizenship Cup high school division.  The NIAAA's competition includes an essay portion which asks the applicants to contemplate how the ABW Code for Living has been reflected in their life experiences.

Smith has made impact at Saint Ben's
 
Since her arrival on campus, Smith has had an impact both in competition and in the classroom at Saint Ben's. While competing in cross country and track and field, Smith, a junior from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, has attained program-historic firsts and accumulated a combined seven All-American honors in cross country and track and field.

On Nov. 19, she finished second and earned her second consecutive All-American honor at the NCAA DIII Cross Country Championships on a snowy, windy and cold Saturday morning on the Forest Akers East Golf Course. Smith, who clocked in at twenty-one minutes and 49.6 seconds, had the best finish ever by a St. Ben's student-athlete. Previously, Missy Petersen was third at the 1994 NCAA DIII Championships.

Smith, who was fifth at DIII cross country championships in 2021, recorded consecutive top-five finishes, which is a historic first at St. Ben's. Smith is the second CSB athlete to earn All-American honors in back-to-back seasons, joining Leah Wurm in 2004 and 2005. However, she is the only Bennies student-athlete to finish top-five in consecutive years. The other CSB All-Americans include Petersen in 1994 and Katy Deignan in 1991.   

Earlier this fall, Smith was named the MIAC Elite 22 student-athlete for cross country and also earned her second straight NCAA DIII North Region Athlete of the Year. The 2021-22 CSB Athlete of the Year, Smith, had a memorable and historic season with CSB Cross Country. She was the first in school history to win back-to-back MIAC individual titles and also the first to repeat as the NCAA DIII North Region individual champion. In addition, Smith finished first or second in every race she ran this year, winning five titles.

A leader at CSB, she has served as team captain for Cross Country and Track and Field as a sophomore and junior, including leading and supporting teammates in practice, competition, daily life and team activities. In the classroom, she is studying for a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics with minors in computer science and Hispanic studies with expected graduation date of May 2024. She has a 4.0 grade point average, been named to the Dean's List and earned a Trustee Scholarship.  Named CoSIDA (now College Sports Communicators) Academic All-American Second Team honors, she is the fourth CSB Academic All-American in program history and just one of two sophomore honored across the three All-America teams.

She has worked as a student researcher at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico in June 2022 – exploring the Julia programming language through the Julia Petra project. She also served as course assistant for the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's Mathematics Department – participating in training sessions to improve skills as a mentor and leader, and provided feedback to students to encourage, motivate and assist their growth in learning.

Smith has also been involved in service, volunteering during fall 2021 with Casa San Benito, an program through SJU Faith that offers English tutoring for Spanish-speaking community members. She also worked as a math tutor in spring 2021 for middle school students.

In 2022, she earned three MIAC Athlete of the Week honors (12 in her career). In the past two years, Smith has 10 individual cross country wins. In addition, she was the sixth female student-athlete in MIAC history to win back-to-back league individual titles, which had not been achieved since Bethel's Marie Borner won three in a row from 2007-09. On Sept. 26, she became the first-ever CSB student-athlete to be named USTFCCCA DIII Athlete of the Week. 
 
At CSB, she has set a combined nine school records (two cross country, three indoor track and field, four outdoor track and field) plus a conference record in the 3K in which she shattered the 35-year conference mark as a sophomore. Smith has totaled 35 event wins combined in cross country and track and field, winning six individual MIAC titles and placing fifth or better in seven national races in track and field and cross country.