LANCASTER, Pa. – Haverford College women's track & field senior Carly Priest has been named the 2025-26 Centennial Conference Women's Scholar-Athlete of the Year, the conference office announced Wednesday.
The Centennial recognizes a Scholar-Athlete of the Year in each of its 24 championship sports to a junior or senior member of the All-Conference team with the highest cumulative grade point average. The overall Scholar-Athletes of the Year are then presented in May to the students with the highest GPA among the 12 men's and 12 women's winners.
The women's recipients of the 2025–26 overall Centennial Conference Scholar-Athlete of the Year award were Dickinson's Lila Brown (soccer), Gettysburg's Mary Huegel (volleyball), Priest, Johns Hopkins' Lianne Saussy (track & field), and Ursinus' Sophia Curtis (lacrosse). The 2025–26 season marked the first-ever five-way tie for the honor on the women's side, surpassing the previous high of a three-way tie in 2024-25 and a two-way tie in 2017-18.
All five award recipients were seniors, first-team All-Centennial selections, and held identical GPAs on a 4.0 scale, leaving the conference's established tiebreaking criteria unable to separate the group.
Since the award was first presented in 2016, Haverford has now earned this distinction three times. James Stadler '18 was named Centennial Conference Scholar-Athlete of the Year for men's outdoor track & field during his junior year before being honored as the overall male winner later that spring. Ben Frost '19 of men's lacrosse later took home the honor. Priest is the first women's winner from Haverford.
Priest, a neuroscience major with a minor in classical culture and society from Columbus, Ohio, has built a standout career on the track and in the classroom. Priest garnered First-Team All-Centennial Conference recognition as part of the 4x800 relay team in 2026 and was selected to the Centennial Conference All-Sportsmanship team.
In the classroom, Priest was a three-time member of the Centennial Conference Winter and Spring Academic Honor Roll( (2023–24, 2024–25, 2025–26) and earned Academic All-Centennial honors during the 2025–26 academic year. On the track, a defining moment came earlier this year when she recorded a lifetime personal best in the 800 meters at the Widener Indoor Classic, a race made especially meaningful with her family in attendance at Penn's Ott Center.
After graduation, Priest will work as a medical assistant in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, before pursuing graduate studies with the goal of becoming a physician associate.
