On the Friday of her NCAA-winning 55.88-second performance in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles, Harvard women’s track co-captain Brenda Taylor was informed of an additional piece of good news.

Taylor has earned the Honda Award for the nation’s most outstanding female athlete in collegiate track and field. Out of the thousands of competitors in over 20 track and field events, Taylor was deemed the most worthy of the award by a 12-member nationwide panel.

“Looking at everyone here at NCAAs, even being here is an honor, so this award means a lot to me,” Taylor said. “I’ve worked so hard. I’ve given my life to track and my teammates.”

Each member of the panel independently ranked their top eight choices to determine the winner. The criteria for selection included leadership abilities, academic excellence and community service in addition to superior athletic skills.

The Honda Awards have been awarded to the nation’s top female collegiate athletes for 25 years in 12 NCAA-sponsored sports. The award is not offered in several women’s sports in which Harvard has been perennially competitive at the national level, such as crew, squash and ice hockey.

Taylor is the first Harvard athlete ever to win a Honda award, and by doing so, she is now eligible to win the Broderick Cup, given to the collegiate woman athlete of the year.

According to Harvard Coach Frank Haggerty, who was a member of the 12-member panel that decided the award, the two factors that made the difference in Taylor’s selection were her highly visible nation-best performance at Penn Relays in April, and the diverse number of events in which she represented Harvard year after year.

“They recognized that over her time at Harvard she had done a number of different events, and obviously at a very high level,” Haggerty said. “They had to be impressed with that.”