2011-2012 Cavaliers of the Year

That's no typo.  During the course of voting, I got a little concerned about ballot-stuffing.  I don't really mind a campaign to stuff the ballot box, mind you - it's happened before.  I'm more worried about one person sitting there and racking up votes, and I thought there was a chance that it'd happened.

Fortunately, I'm reasonably satisfied that it's not actually possible to do that.  What did likely happen was a Facebook campaign.  No worries then.  The people have spoken, and the ballot box winner is something of a surprise, and the first female winner of the FOV COY Award: Morgan Brian.

That's her, doing Virginia proud indeed by scoring a pinpoint free kick goal at the women's U-20 CONCACAF championships against Mexico; the US would go on to win the tournament and take the gold, and Brian will be among those representing the US at the U-20 Women's World Cup in Japan next month.  Outstanding.  You can't ask for much more than that from a Cavalier of the Year.

It's my award, though, and I can bend the rules a little.  This is not to take away anything from Morgan Brian: she's the vote winner, and I don't nominate anyone for the award who isn't a deserving winner of the award.  That said, the vote tally shows two runaways from the pack, in a way that didn't happen in previous years.  And I like to think as a UVA blogger I have my finger at least a little bit on the pulse of UVA fans, and for the regular readership and indeed, UVA fans in general, there's really only one who captured everyone's imagination in a truly unique way:

With apologies to the man himself for ripping it off his Twitter feed.  It does a Hoo proud that for once, we're right when we see the brilliance that most others miss.  Well, us and the talent evaluators that matter.  Mike Scott is getting his shot in the NBA, drafted in the second round by the Atlanta Hawks, and I for one will be surprised if there isn't room in the League for a body-banging power forward that can outmuscle you for the rebound and then soft-touch a jumper when you don't respect he can do it.

So there you are: Co-Cavaliers of the Year, Morgan Brian and Mike Scott.  For posterity, here is the voting tally:

Morgan Brian: 107
Mike Scott: 99
Steele Stanwick: 14
Keith Werman: 6
Chase Minnifield: 4
Briggy Imbriglia: 3
Meredith Cavalier, Sidney Thorston: 2
Brittany Altomare, Jarmere Jenkins, Josie Owen, Matt Snyder: 1
Will Bates: 0

Congrats to the two champions.  Another fine season is finally in the books, and honestly, I'm already kind of excited in wondering who'll be next year's nominees.

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Some scheduling notes: Tomorrow there'll be a belated weekend review, in which we'll discuss Syracuse, Hokies off the deep end, and other fascinating topics.  That'll be it for posting this week, as I'll be taking my yearly summer sabbatical.  You can always tell when that is on your own; it coincides with this.  The only reason I'm not sabbaticaling right now is because my internship made it too tough to participate this year, but otherwise I don't miss that for nuthin.  And either way I need a summer break.  I'll spend part of it this year putting together the August previews, or at least, that's what I'm telling myself.  So one more post tomorrow, then back next Monday.