EUGENE, Ore. – Already the unanimous 2019-20 national player of the year for women’s basketball, Sabrina Ionescu made more history on Tuesday as the first Oregon student-athlete ever to win the prestigious James E. Sullivan Award as the nation’s most outstanding amateur athlete.

The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) announced Ionescu as the co-winner of the 90th annual Sullivan Award, along with University of Iowa wrestler Spencer Lee. Ionescu and Lee join an elite group of previous winners that includes Peyton Manning (1997), Michelle Kwan (2001), Michael Phelps (2003), J.J. Reddick (2005), Tim Tebow (2007), Shawn Johnson (2008), Ezekiel Elliott (2014) and Kathryn Plummer (2019).

“This is truly an honor,” Ionescu said after being announced as a co-winner on the Sports Stories Podcast. “I’m blessed to be in this position and blessed to be among such great athletes and people, and to follow in the footsteps of the past AAU Sullivan Award winners.

“I just want to say thank you to the University of Oregon and anyone that has been a part of my journey in the past and now in the future. Congrats to everyone that was up for this award, it’s really inspirational to be in a pool with these athletes.”

The No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 WNBA Draft by the New York Liberty, Ionescu is the fifth women’s basketball player ever to receive the Sullivan Award, and she becomes the fourth to be named a co-winner. Sisters Coco Miller and Kelly Miller shared the award in 1999, and Breanna Stewart was the co-winner in 2015 along with Keenan Reynolds (football). Chamique Holdsclaw (1998) is the lone women’s basketball player to win the award outright.

Ionescu swept every national player of the year award after a stellar senior season while also being named a unanimous first-team all-American, the Nancy Lieberman national point guard of the year and the Pac-12 player of the year, receiving all three honors for the third year in a row. The Walnut Creek, Calif., native is the first Oregon athlete to win the Sullivan Award after joining former volleyball standout Liz Brenner (2012) as the only Ducks ever to be named finalists for the honor.

– via Oregon Athletic Communications