NCAA member schools nominated 535 female student-athletes for the 2021 NCAA Woman of the Year award and 24 of those are tennis athletes.
Established in 1991, the NCAA Woman of the Year award is rooted in Title IX and recognizes graduating female college athletes who have exhausted their NCAA eligibility and distinguished themselves in academics, athletics, service, and leadership throughout their collegiate careers.
The NCAA encourages member schools to honor their top graduating female college athletes by nominating them for the Woman of the Year award. Schools can recognize two nominees if at least one is a woman of color or international student-athlete.
Next, conferences will select up to two nominees each from their pool of member school nominees. All nominees who compete in a sport not sponsored by their school’s primary conference, as well as associate conference nominees and independent nominees, will be considered by a selection committee. Then, the Woman of the Year selection committee, made up of representatives from the NCAA membership, will choose 10 women from each division to make up the Top 30.
The selection committee will determine the top three honorees in each division from the Top 30, and the nine finalists will be announced this fall. From those nine finalists, the NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics will choose the 2021 NCAA Woman of the Year later this fall.
| Nominee | School | Conference | NCAA Division |
| Sandra Allen | Lees-McRae College | Conference Carolinas | NCAA Division II |
| Mariacristina Andrisani | Academy of Art University | Pacific West Conference | NCAA Division II |
| Lena van Bergen | Purdue University Northwest | Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference | NCAA Division II |
| Maty Cancini Dugarte | Iowa State University | Big 12 Conference | NCAA Division I |
| Meible Chi | Duke University | Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) | NCAA Division I |
| Eleanor Crane | Averett University | USA South Athletic Conference | NCAA Division III |
| Jaeda Daniel | North Carolina State University | Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) | NCAA Division I |
| Nandini Das | Florida State University | Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) | NCAA Division I |
| Zoe Dominique Gubbels | Angelo State University | Lone Star Conference | NCAA Division II |
| Claire Hillyer | McMurry University | American Southwest Conference | NCAA Division III |
| Kathleen Joseph | University of Texas at Dallas | American Southwest Conference | NCAA Division III |
| Zoe Leigh Kaffen | Trinity University (Texas) | Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference | NCAA Division III |
| Elisa Kendall | East Texas Baptist University | American Southwest Conference | NCAA Division III |
| Ashley Lahey | Pepperdine University | West Coast Conference (WCC) | NCAA Division I |
| Julie Lord | Lake Forest College | Midwest Conference | NCAA Division III |
| Petra Melounova | University of Hawaii, Manoa | Big West Conference | NCAA Division I |
| Melany Opolz | Cameron University | Lone Star Conference | NCAA Division II |
| Maja Ornberg | Florida Gulf Coast University | ASUN Conference | NCAA Division I |
| Ghazal Pakbaten | Concordia University Irvine | Pacific West Conference | NCAA Division II |
| Estela Perez-Somarriba | University of Miami (FL) | Atlantic Coast Conference | NCAA Division I |
| Maggie Riermann | Bethel University (MN) | Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference | NCAA Division III |
| Fabienne Schmidt | Austin Peay State University | Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) | NCAA Division I |
| Anne Timm | Augustana College (IL) | College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin | NCAA Division III |
| Vanessa Wong | University of Washington | Pac-12 Conference | NCAA Division I |
