American baseball player Aaron Judge and Polish tennis star Iga Swiatek were named the United States Sports Academy’s Athletes of the Month after their impressive performances on the world stage in September.
Judge earned American League player of the month honors after hitting .417/.565/.869 with 10 home runs, eight doubles, 17 RBIs and 30 walks in 25 games in the month. He hit his 61st home run of the season on 28 September 2022, tying Roger Maris’ single-season AL record from 1961.
Swiatek won the women’s U.S. Open championship, defeating Ons Jabur 6-2, 7-6 on 11 September 2022 in New York. It was her second major title this season and she is the first player since Angelique Kerber in 2016 to win multiple majors in the same season. She is also the first Polish woman to win the US Open.
The second place finisher on the men’s side was Kenyan runner Eliud Kipchoge and third place went to Spanish tennis player Carlos Alcaraz.
Kipchoge broke his own marathon world record by 30 seconds with a time of 2:01:09 at the Berlin Marathon on 25 September 2022. Kipchoge set the previous world record at the same race in 2018. It was his 15th marathon win and 10th major title in his career.
Alcaraz won the US Open men’s title after defeating Norway’s Casper Ruud 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 (1), 6-3 in the finals on 11 September 2022 in New York. At age 19, he is the youngest man to ascend to the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) No. 1 ranking.
The second place finisher on the women’s side was American basketball player Chelsea Gray and third place went to Australian surfer Stephanie Gilmore.
Gray earned WNBA Finals MVP honors after averaging 18.3 points per game in the championship series and scored 20 points in the series-clinching game for the Los Vegas Aces in September. Gray shot 45 percent from three-point range and averaged six assists per game in the Finals.
Gilmore held off Olympic champion Carissa Moore to win a record eighth women’s world surfing title at the World Surf League Finals in California on 8 September 2022. Only American man Kelly Slater has more world titles, 11, among men and women competitors.
Each month, the public is invited to participate in the Academy’s worldwide Athlete of the Month program by nominating athletes and then voting online during the first week of every month. The online votes are used to guide the Academy selection committee in choosing the male and female monthly winners, who then become eligible for selection to the prestigious Athlete of the Year ballot. A worldwide public vote on the annual ballot is used to guide the committee in making the final selection.
The Athlete of the Year Award is part of the United States Sports Academy’s Awards of Sport program, which each year serves as “A Tribute to the Artist and the Athlete.” The Academy presents the awards to pay tribute to those who have made significant contributions to sport, in categories as diverse as the artist and the athlete in several different arenas of sport.
The awards honor exemplary achievement in coaching, all-around athletic performance, courage, humanitarian activity, fitness and media, among others. The Academy’s American Sport Art Museum and Archives (ASAMA) annually recognizes these men and women through its Sport Artist of the Year, Honorary Doctorates, Distinguished Service Awards, Outstanding Athletes, and Alumni of the Year awards. This is the 37th year of the Academy’s Awards of Sport program.
The United States Sports Academy is an independent, non-profit, accredited, special mission sports university created to serve the nation and world with programs in instruction, research and service. The role of the Academy is to prepare men and women for careers in the profession of sports.
Founded in 1984, ASAMA is dedicated to the preservation of sports art, history, and literature. The ASAMA collection is composed of more than 1,800 works of sport art across a variety of media, including paintings, sculptures, assemblages, prints and photographs. The museum is open free to the public from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays. For more information, go to www.asama.org.
The Academy is based in Daphne, Ala. For more information, call (251) 626-3303 or visit www.ussa.edu.
