Galloway and Dalton nominated for Wooden Cup
December 22, 2009 | Women's Soccer
Dec. 22, 2009
MADISON, Wis. -- The sixth annual Coach Wooden Citizenship Cup, an award given for the most outstanding role model among athletes, announced its finalists for the 2010 award ceremony, according to Fred Northup, President of Athletes for a Better World.
The Wooden Cup is named in honor of John Wooden, one of the most successful coaches in collegiate history. His legacy as a person of integrity, high moral character, compassion, and civic-mindedness continues to make him one of the most admired coaches in the history of sport.
With Peyton Manning, John Smoltz, and Cal Ripken, Jr. as previous recipients, the Wooden Cup is becoming one of the most prestigious awards in all of sports. Recipients are considered role models and athletes of excellence both on and off the field.
The University of Wisconsin is proud to announce that one of its athletes was a semi-finalist for the award and another earned honorable mention recognition. Badger women’s rower Maggie Galloway was one of 20 semi-finalists selected nationwide in all sports, while women’s soccer goaltender Michele Dalton was among 26 people named honorable mention. In all, approximately 100 collegiate student-athletes were nominated for the award.
The five finalists for the award include Zak Boggs, a soccer player from South Florida, Colt McCoy, a football player from Texas, Brianna O’Donnell, a field hockey player from North Carolina Rebecca Poskin, a soccer player from Dartmouth and Melissa Schellberg, a softball player from Harvard.
On the water, Wooden semifinalist Galloway let her presence be felt. Last season, she aided in the Badgers’ 13th place finish in the NCAA Championships by anchoring the seventh seat in the varsity eight races. Her varsity four team notched a second place finish at the tournament, marking UW’s highest finish in the race in school history.
The Louisville, Ky., native was a 2009 Second-Team All-Big Ten pick and was part of Wisconsin’s Big Ten Boat of the Week back on March 24 for the boat’s perfect weekend at the Longhorn Invitational. And, after all of last season’s successes, Galloway was named to the 2009 Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association All-Central Region First Team.
However, as prestigious as her on-water career was, it was Galloway’s work in the classroom and community that led to her nomination of the award. Of the panel of nominees, the 2007 All-Academic Big Ten recipient was the only rower and one of five Big Ten athletes to receive recognition.
Galloway had a major hand in recent recycling efforts during Badger football games as a founding member and then as chair of REthink Wisconsin. REthink Wisconsin is a student coalition, “formed to encourage and facilitate sustainable waste management practices throughout the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus community.”
In her role with recycling at Camp Randall, Galloway was responsible for recruiting and managing volunteers. She worked with the athletic department to organize and improve recycling efforts. Their efforts diverted over 6,000 pounds of waste from landfills so far.
That is just the start, as Galloway put in nearly 150 hours with Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch as an intern and as a volunteer to organize a fundraiser, lesson plans and projects with teachers, chefs and farmers. In addition, she put in six hours a week during part of the summer of 2007 volunteering in habitat restoration at the UW Arboretum and spent August of 2007 in Nicaragua at the Children’s Nutrition Center, caring for infants and toddlers suffering from malnutrition for eight hours a week.
Dalton was nominated for the Wooden Cup for her hard work on the field and her work in the community. Dalton, the starting goalkeeper for the Wisconsin women’s soccer team, helped the Badgers to its first Sweet Sixteen appearance since 1993. Dalton had seven shutouts on the season garnering a .792 save percentage and a 1.16 goals-against average.
Outside of soccer, Dalton has been an active member in the community through numerous volunteer opportunities to most recently her undertaking of the ‘Red and White Hunger Fight.’ Dalton coordinated the event which is being tagged as the first-ever campus-wide food drive. The food drive collected more than four tons of food and more than $2000 in its first year, and almost five thousand pounds of food and close to $1500 in its second year, both under her direction.
