Nickel: Brookfield's Anika Washburn a finalist for NCAA Woman of the Year award

There are nine finalists up for the prestigious NCAA Woman of the Year award.

There are 10 recipients who have already been named to the elite NCAA Today's Top 10.

And Brookfield's Anika Washburn is on both of those lists.

Washburn is a 2018 graduate of Brookfield Academy, where she was first-team all-state as well as the leading scorer on the state champion soccer team.

She’s also a 2022 graduate of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where she helped lead the Division III school to a national runner-up finish a year ago.

"I don't want to make it sound light, but every accomplishment I heard that she made, my response is, 'Congratulations,'" said said Lee Rogers, Washburn's high school coach at Brookfield Academy and her gym teacher since the first grade. "And then my next response would be, 'I'm not at all surprised.' I would say whoever's in charge of these awards got it right."

The 23-year-old software engineer for Microsoft in Seattle was one of the best athletes in Division III in recent years.

The NCAA Today's Top 10 recipients are former student-athletes with exceptional athletic and academic achievements, who also made contributions to their campuses and communities. Washburn and the other winners will be honored Jan. 10 at the NCAA Convention's Welcome and Awards Presentation in Phoenix.

The NCAA Woman of the Year finalists - selected for their outstanding achievements in academics, athletics, community service and leadership out of 619 nominees - will be recognized Jan. 11 during a ceremony at the NCAA Convention in Phoenix as well. Then the 2023 NCAA Woman of the Year will also be named.

Anika Washburn was a high achiever at Case Western Reserve, helped lead soccer team to Division III runner-up finish

Washburn was a top student who earned a computer science degree, with minors in math and Spanish.

In soccer, Washburn's team - despite going through a couple of coaching changes in her career and a missed season during the pandemic - was the 2022 NCAA Division III runner-up. Washburn made the all-tournament team, where the Spartans set a Division III record for goals scored. She was a three-time all-University Athletic Association first-team honoree and was named the conference's offensive player of the year twice.

Washburn was part of a core group of players who won the conference for the first time, reached the Sweet 16 for the first time in school history and kept rolling after that, until losing 2-1 to Johns Hopkins in the championship game.

“We went through a lot of different coaching changes, which was difficult, but I think it kind of exposed our team to different ways of playing, and ultimately that helped a lot,” Washburn said.

She is Case Western Reserve's career and single-season record holder in goals, assists, points, game-winning goals and penalty kicks made.

At Brookfield Academy, Anika Washburn was 'the consummate teammate'

While at Brookfield Academy, Washburn considered going down the engineering path of her parents and her brother but she took a different interest in the STEM classes. She likes stats.

On the prep soccer pitch, Rogers called her "the consummate teammate." A smart player, extremely gifted, hard-working at everything she did, Washburn also relished playing a team sport as team captain.

"Her freshman year we went to state for the very first time," Rogers said. "Lost in the semifinals in the shootout. But, you know, if we didn't have her, there's no way we would have been there.

"She knew how important her teammates were. She was so good at making those around her better."

Rogers said in a 2-2 draw with eventual state champion Catholic Memorial one year, Washburn scored both goals. She could play with any division, any level of competition, even back in high school.

"I mean, that's just the kind of the player she was," Rogers said. "She was just so hard to stop. You knew it was coming. Really the only credit I can take is making sure she was on the bus and on the field when the game starts. I kind of say that jokingly, but it's not."

Internships with Microsoft helped land software engineer job

In college, Washburn excelled. She had a 3.98 grade point average and graduated summa cum laude. And after three summer internships with Microsoft, she took the software engineer job permanently. She works on the Azure Storage cloud team and she was kind enough to explain what her job is.

“There's these data centers all over the world with servers in them, and the servers have that amount of storage that customers can use,” Washburn said. “My specific team - the configuration team - we manage updates to these servers. So, if you imagine you have iPhone updates, this is the same thing, where servers need to have updates all the time. We're managing and deploying those updates to the servers, making sure that whole process runs smoothly and efficiently.”

This kind of work is rewarding to Washburn. She likes the additional challenge of working with the software's complicated architecture.

“I'm only eight months in, but I can see this taking many, many years to understand exactly how each of our services work,” she said. “And that's something that I really enjoy.”

But Washburn also hopes to serve as an example to other young, smart and talented women who might otherwise find her male-dominated field a little intimidating. She was very involved in the Girls Who Code engineering group in college, creating curriculum and sessions in her three years as co-president. Washburn also worked on other side hustles, like the Google Developer Student Club, an application to connect local food suppliers and nonprofit organizations. She also worked at Signature Signs Co., constructing and selling custom neon signs across campus.

Washburn decided to use her own talent and intellectual and athletic gifts to realize her potential at every opportunity. Her determined and driven spirit pushed her, and her experiences as a student-athlete allowed her to develop life-long skills.

“One of the biggest things I learned in college and even high school was time management and being able to be efficient with the time that I have,” Washburn said.

“The other thing I'd say is find your way to kind of relieve stress, and I still play soccer. I'm still very active. And that's been great to do a workout in the morning and then feel ready to go for work and be able to just stay focused for longer periods of time.

“And then I also say like learning quickly… there's a lot of times in soccer where you're facing a new type of team, an opponent who plays in a very different style and being able to adapt quickly and learn on the fly. To figure out these problems is something that I've used a lot in work, just especially being a new hire where things are very new and changing or not going to understand everything. Being able to adapt on the fly is something that I think learn from being an athlete.”

Don't overlook Division III

Washburn likely could have played Division I soccer, even though an injury sidelined her for her senior year. But it was never about status for her. It's always been about chasing the best balance between academics and competition, and that's why it's so great this NCAA award looks at all three divisions, and what it truly means to be a student-athlete.

"She she was kind of looking at these DIII schools to begin with, but I know she had interest I believe from Marquette, UWM," Lee said.

But Washburn liked Division III and the University Athletic Association in particular, because the academic standards were so high. And the athletic competition meets that. DIII athletes truly play for the love of the game, the challenge, the camaraderie of team, and the love for sportsmanship. These kids don’t get any scholarship money.

“Really amazing to be in this group. Division III can be overlooked as it's not as competitive. It's not as athletically demanding," Washburn said. "But the fact that the NCAA recognizes the hard work that we put in as well both from an academic and athletic standpoint, it's really great.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Brookfield's Anika Washburn candidate for NCAA Woman of the Year award