NEW YORK - Senior javelin thrower Caroline Hamilton (Nottingham, Pa.) was announced on Wednesday afternoon as the BIG EAST female winner of the 2017 Michael Tranghese Postgraduate Leadership Award. The award is given to one male and one female student-athlete from a BIG EAST-sponsored sport and is selected by the BIG EAST Conference Academic Affairs Committee. Hamilton is the first Villanova student-athlete to earn this prestigious honor.

Winners of the Michael Tranghese Postgraduate Leadership Award earn a $5,000 scholarship which may be applied to postgraduate study. The award is selected from among student-athletes who have been admitted to a degree-granting or professional program for the following academic year, and who have demonstrated leadership through excellence in academic credentials, athletic performance and depth of commitment to service within their institution or the community. Hamilton and Creighton men's tennis standout Harrison Lang are this year's winners.

Hamilton concluded her stellar collegiate career this spring and graduated from Villanova with a major in Psychology and a minor in Peace and Justice. She has chosen to attend DeSales University and will pursue a Master's degree in Physician Assistant studies. Hamilton will be a four-time selection to the BIG EAST All-Academic Team when this year's honorees are announced, and she graduates from Villanova with 3.97 grade-point average in her major.

In her four years as a student-athlete, Hamilton never finished lower than second in the javelin at the BIG EAST Championships. She was the conference runner-up in the event as both a freshman and a sophomore, then went on to be the conference champion each of the last two years. Her final collegiate competition was this year's BIG EAST meet, in which she successfully defended her conference title on her home track with a winning throw of 44.51 meters. That mark is the second-longest of her career and makes her the Wildcats first women's athlete to earn All-BIG EAST honors in the javelin four straight years.

Prior to this year's conference championships, Hamilton recorded a personal best throw of 44.59 meters and finished third in the college section of the javelin at the Penn Relays. That mark also moved Hamilton up a spot into fifth place on the all-time Villanova performance list. In all, she threw for over 40 meters 16 times during her career and tallied nine career first-place finishes.

The Michael Tranghese Postgraduate Leadership Award is named after the BIG EAST's first full-time employee who served as commissioner of the conference from 1990 to 2009 and embodied leadership and dedication from the league's inception.

The award in his name is one of a number of scholarships presented by the BIG EAST Conference during the 2016-17 academic year. In addition to this award, which was introduced for the 2010-11 academic year, 20 student-athletes (one male and one female from each of the BIG EAST's 10 member institutions) have been named as the winners of the BIG EAST Institutional Scholar-Athlete Scholarships. The conference also names male and female BIG EAST Basketball Scholar-Athletes of the Year.