USC’s Women of Troy Awarded First Ever Capital One Cup Trophy

The USC women’s athletics program was ranked #1 in the final standings of the 2015-2016 Capital One Cup with a total of 96 points due to their national titles in beach volleyball and water polo, along with various top 10 finishes in golf, indoor/outdoor track and field, lacrosse, volleyball and swimming and diving.

The Capital One Cup is an NCAA athletics award in which the top Division 1 men’s and women’s college athletics programs in the country are honored. As a result of the Trojan women having strong performances this year, USC will bring home the Capital One Cup and $200,000 in student athlete scholarship funds to their athletics department. Also, USC will be honored at the ESPY’s this month represented by Lisa Leslie.

This is the first time USC’s women’s athletic program has won the Capital One Cup Trophy and former Trojan, Lisa Leslie, spoke with us briefly on her excitement of being able to finally award her Alma Mater with the trophy and what it means to her.

For me, it’s really all about bragging rights and following the Capital One Cup throughout the year for your team and being able to celebrate with them. I get to attend the ESPY awards and this year will honor USC on the women’s side, which is great since the Capital One Cup has been going on for about six years and I have really mostly been awarding that trophy to Stanford Cardinal, so I’m very excited to get the chance to recognize USC on stage alongside Richard Sherman, who will be awarding the Stanford men.

Lisa Leslie also went on to acknolwedge the hard work and dedication that it takes to win championships and get to this point in college athletics and followed up by mentioning that the beach volleyball team won the first ever national title in college history.

All Trojans now, men and women, get to brag that our women have done such a great job and I think that’s really the beauty of it, it really helps bring recognition and build camaraderie and it’s such a great opportunity to be at the ESPY’S and give out the Capital One Cup.

Nothing like this has ever really been done, and the other beauty behind the Capital One Cup is that a lot of other smaller sports get overpowered by the bigger sports like football and basketball who also bring in bigger revenue. Leslie continued on explaining how it’s a great way to take a bigger look into not one, but all of the sports which brings camaraderie amongst the athletes and support of one another, in addition to how she wishes that the Capital One Cup was around when she was playing.

Lisa Leslie also left these words for the USC women’s athletics program and their accomplishment of being granted this award, as well as being noted as the top athletics program in the nation.

Fight on, to the women of Troy and continue to persevere and excellence is always our standadrd. I think it’s really important for the students, not just the student athletes, to engage and follow such wonderful athletes. Ladies, keep up the great work and I am so proud to be a Trojan.

For all of the fans who are following all of these programs and wish to engage and follow along, you can do so at capitalonecup.com or check into Capital One on twitter and Facebook.