NDSU women’s track and field athlete Shelby Gunnells has been selected as the 2019-20 Summit League Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year across all sports.
The award is the most prestigious individual honor given by the league each season. It is awarded by a vote of the league’s faculty athletics representatives.
Gunnells, who is from Solon, Iowa, is the seventh Bison student-athlete to earn the distinction, and the fourth female winner from NDSU.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in geology this spring with a perfect 4.0 GPA, and will add a minor in chemistry as she competes one final time for the Bison during the 2021 outdoor track and field season. Gunnells plans to continue her education at Texas A&M University, where she has been granted delayed admission into the school’s doctoral program in chemical oceanography.
Gunnells recently was elected into the prestigious Fulbright Scholar Program, earning a Fulbright grant to carry out research in Norway. She declined the award to return to NDSU for her final season as a Bison thrower.
Gunnells has received the Allan C. Ashworth scholarship twice during her career, which is given to the NDSU student majoring in geology with the highest academic standing. She also received the Blue Key Honor Society scholarship.
Gunnells has been honored twice as a CoSIDA Academic All-American for the Bison, earning first-team honors in 2020.
She was named the 2020 Summit League Indoor Field Athlete of the Year and earned Summit League Indoor Championship MVP honors. She ranked eighth nationally in the shot put for the season, and qualified for the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships that were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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