Duke freshman golfer Virginia Elena Carta wins Honda Sport Award

Duke University freshman Virginia Elena Carta was named the Honda Sport Award winner for golf Tuesday.

The Honda Sport Award has been presented annually for 40 years by the College Women’s Sports Awards to the top female athletes in 12 NCAA-sanctioned sports.

With this honor, Carta becomes a finalist for the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year and the prestigious 2016 Honda Cup, which will be presented on a live telecast on CBS Sports Network on June 27 at the Galen Center on the campus of the University of Southern California in downtown Los Angeles.

Carta was chosen by a vote of administrators from over 1,000 NCAA member schools.

A freshman from Udine, Italy, Carta won the 2016 NCAA Individual Championship by an NCAA-record eight stroke margin, and her 16-under-par and 72-hole total of 272 were both NCAA records as well.

The CWSA has honored the nation’s top NCAA female athletes, recognizing superior athletic skills, leadership, academic excellence and eagerness to participate in community service.

N.C. State: The team qualified five in individual events and a 4x100 relay team, and will travel to Eugene Ore., for the NCAA Championships Wednesday through Saturday at Hayward Field.

Jonathan Addison (long jump, 4x100) and Alexis Perry (long jump, 100m hurdles) headline the group as returnees to the NCAA Outdoor Championships. Luis Vargas and Sam Parsons will make their first appearance at Hayward Field in the 10,000m. Nyheim Hines, Shannon Patterson and Quashawn Cunningham will join Addison in the 4x100. All three are underclassmen making their first NCAA Championships appearance.

ECU: The kickoff time for the Pirates’ nonconference contest against South Carolina, scheduled for Sept. 17 at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia, has been set for 4 p.m.

While the team has captured four of the last seven contests in Columbia dating back to 1992, South Carolina has enjoyed the upper hand since the series was renewed with a 56-37 neutral site win at Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium in 2011 along with 48-10 and 33-23 triumphs at Williams-Brice Stadium in 2012 and 2014, respectively. Both programs will be led by head coaches who are in the first year at their schools. Scottie Montgomery inherits a squad that was 5-7 in 2015, while South Carolina’s Will Muschamp takes over a team that went 3-9 last season.

Duke: Playing against a mixed squad of China national team members and students from Beijing Normal University, the Blue Devils dropped a 6-3 decision Monday in the friendship game, which is part of the seventh annual meeting of the U.S-China Consultation on People-to-People Exchange in Beijing.

UNC: Two-time All-Big East Conference men’s golfer Jose Montaño is transferring from Xavier University. Montaño earned Big East Conference Freshman of the Year honors in 2015 and was a PING All-Midwest Region selection in 2015 and 2016. He was the Big East Player of the Week three times and the Big East Player of the Month in November 2014. He also was a member of the Big East All-Academic team as a freshman.

Duke: Beginning this summer, 21 student-athletes from Duke and 19 from Stanford are set to represent the inaugural class of the Rubenstein-Bing Student-Athlete Civic Engagement (ACE) Program. The program provides one-time funding for student-athletes to engage in a three-week international service project. The first of the four overseas initiatives will begin June 19.

From news releases

This story was originally published June 6, 2016 at 11:30 PM with the headline "Duke freshman golfer Virginia Elena Carta wins Honda Sport Award."