ACC honors Crotty, Engen ... and 2 sports writers

The ACC’s two top awards are actually named for sports writers, with the Anthony J. McKevlin Award going to the top male athlete and the Mary Garber Award going to the top female.

And this year, Duke lacrosse player Ned Crotty deserved the McKevlin, in an honor that continues Duke’s fast-forward thrust past the negative issues of the past. The Blue Devils broke through and won the national championship this year behind classy coach John Danowski, and Crotty won the Tewaaraton Trophy as the nation’s top lacrosse player. Crotty had 23 goals and 63 assists in Duke’s 16-4 season.

Winning the Garber Award was North Carolina’s Whitney Engen, the soccer national player of the year who led the Tar Heels to the NCAA title. She won the Honda Award as the nation’s top player and paced a Carolina defense that led the Heels to a 23-3-1 record.

Every year, voting for the award is intense, but Crotty and Engen are deserving winners – two national players of the year who led their programs to national titles.

And as for McKevlin? He was a former News & Observer sports editor; Garber was one of the pioneers in sports writing as a reporter for the Winston-Salem Journal.