MIDDLETOWN, Pa. - Penn State Harrisburg women's basketball player Kendis Butler has been selected as a nominee for the 2023 NCAA Woman of the Year Award. 

After being named the 2023 United East Female Senior Athlete of the Year, Butler was chosen as the conference's nominee for the prestigious award. She was one of a record-breaking 619 student-athletes from across all NCAA Divisions (I, II, III) nominated by member schools, one of 164 NCAA Woman of the Year Award conference-level nominees, and one of 63 chosen at the Division III level. Butler joins former Penn State Harrisburg women's volleyball standout Brittany Ebaugh as the only NCAA Woman of the Year nominees in school history. 

The Woman of the Year Selection Committee will choose the Top 30 honorees — 10 from each division — from the conference-level nominees. The Top 30 honorees will be announced in October. The selection committee will then determine the top three honorees in each division from the Top 30 and the nine finalists will be announced in November. From those nine finalists, the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics will choose the 2023 NCAA Woman of the Year. The honorees will be celebrated at the Woman of the Year Award Ceremony at the NCAA Convention in Phoenix in January.The NCAA Woman of the Year program was established in 1991 and honors the academic achievement, athletic excellence, community service, and leadership of graduating female college athletes.

The most-decorated player in program history, Butler completed her illustrious career as the NCAA Division III active leader in 3-point field goals. The recent graduate ranked 19th across all three NCAA divisions with 295 career triples and her 3-point total ranks her 26th all-time in Division III history. The York, Pa. native was named a 2023 Jostens Trophy finalist, becoming the first player in school history to earn the prestigious distinction. The versatile guard is a two-time City of Basketball Love (CoBL) All-Area selection and she became the first player in program history to earn all-conference accolades on three occasions, securing a pair of United East All-Conference First-Team honors to go along with a second-team moniker. During her final season, the sharpshooter became Penn State Harrisburg's all-time leading scorer (1,277 points) and she holds numerous program records, including career field goals (382), career 3-point field goals, points in a single season (424), points in a single game (33), and 3-pointers in a single contest (10).

A three-year team captain, Butler was outstanding in the classroom and was selected as the inaugural United East Women's Basketball Senior Scholar-Athlete of the Year this past spring. She joined teammate Jayla Galbreath as the first players in program history to earn College Sports Communicators (CSC) Academic All-District accolades thanks to their combination of athletic and academic success. She garnered five straight conference all-academic awards dating back to her rookie campaign. She served as the student representative to Penn State Harrisburg's Faculty Athletics Senate Committee and has contributed to five CSC Publication & Digital Design award-winning graphics as a student-worker for the school's sports information department. The Communications major and American Studies minor graduated in May with a stellar 3.96 cumulative GPA. 

Penn State Harrisburg's most-recent Student-Athlete Leadership Council Chair (SALC), Butler was also a member of the United East Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) in 2022-23. Last fall, she helped aid a Ukrainian refugee family that relocated to Enola, Pa. following the Russian invasion of the country by helping clean and renovate a house to be move-in ready, collecting and moving in furniture, and painting bedrooms. In January, she helped organize an assembly at nearby Susquehanna Township Middle School in which Penn State Harrisburg student-athletes mentored at-risk students hoping to play sports in college. In February, she spearheaded a canned food drive that collected more than 160 items for the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank and Penn State Harrisburg's on-campus food pantry. In each of the past two years, she joined fellow Penn State Harrisburg student-athletes in visiting nearby Middletown Area elementary schools and reading to students on National Read Across America Day. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she led an initiative to design and distribute handwritten greeting cards to senior citizens quarantined at a retirement home in North Carolina.