Rising senior for the Winthrop women’s tennis team, Lauren Proctor, has been voted the 2017-18 Big South Conference Female Student-Athlete of the Year. When announced, Proctor became the first tennis player to ever receive the conference’s Female Student-Athlete of the Year award.
This is the third consecutive year that Proctor has been named the Big South Women’s Tennis Player of the Year. She was 21-2 in the spring at No. 1 singles. Proctor also maintained a perfect record as she went 7-0 in the season. She also won 13 straight matches throughout the regular season.
In three seasons at Winthrop, Proctor has posted a singles record of 66-9 with a perfect 24-0 mark in conference play. The last two seasons, Proctor and her partner, Megan Kauffman, went 40-7 as doubles partners.
For the third year in a row, Proctor has earned all-conference honors in doubles with Kauffman, as they went 22-0 at No. 1 doubles before falling in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Championships. This earned both of them All-American honors.
Proctor also qualified for the NCAA Championship in singles as she entered the championship ranked 36th. She finished the season ranked 41st in singles and reached as high as 14th throughout the year. In the fall, Proctor won the ITA Regional Championship in October, becoming the first Eagle in program history to receive that honor. She was also honored in the ITA National Summer Championship.
Proctor helped lead the women’s tennis team to a third straight win in the Big South Conference Championship. Just this past spring, the Lady Eagles went on to the NCAA Tournament and for the first time captured the conference’s first round victory by defeating 20th-ranked Auburn 4-3.
This is the second straight year the Eagles took home Big South Female Student-Athlete of the Year.