New Orleans - Texas A&M's Jessica Beard and Florida State's Ngoni Makusha led fan voting for The Bowerman, an honor awarded to the top collegiate track and field athlete in the nation, as the 16-day balloting period ended at midnight on Tuesday with a total of 82,949 votes.
With a total of 20,301 votes, Beard earned the most votes among the three finalists for the women's honor in claiming 49 percent of the women's ballot total of 41,266. LSU's Kimberlyn Duncan finished with 17,192 votes (42 percent) while Arkansas' Tina Sutej was third with 3,773 votes.
Makusha led the men's field of three finalists with 17,562 votes to claim 42 percent of the 41,683 responses on the men's ballot. Washington State's Jeshua Anderson finished second with 12,680 votes (30 percent) while Florida's Christian Taylor placed third with 11,441 votes (27 percent).
Previous years of online balloting for The Bowerman had 20,000 overall votes in 2009 and 27,000 selections in 2010.
Beard, who is the first athlete in the three-year history of The Bowerman to earn over 20,000 fan votes, went back-and-forth in the lead with Duncan over the two weeks of online voting. However, in the last two days, Beard earned over 9,600 votes to reclaim and hold the lead.
Leading the fan voting is another accomplishment Beard has achieved in her senior year with the Aggies. Recently Beard was selected as the female Big 12 Athlete of the Year and she earned Texas A&M's female Distinguished Letterman of the Year. Beard also became the first Aggie track and field athlete to be named a finalist for the Honda Sports Award.
On the track, Beard became just the third female, and first since 1999, to win NCAA Indoor and Outdoor titles in the 400 meters while running on the winning 4 x 400 relay at both national championship meets in the same season. Her relay split of 49.13 seconds to garner the outdoor 4x400 title was the best-ever in NCAA history, topping the previous best of 49.6 seconds.
Among the states, Texas had the most visitors with over 32 percent, followed by Washington (12 percent), Florida (9 percent), Georgia (8 percent) and Louisiana (5 percent). College Station claimed the most visits by a city as over 12 percent (6,351) of the visits came from Aggieland.
Social media played a big part of the voting experience as nearly 10,000 of the votes to The Bowerman website came as a referral from Facebook. NewZimbabwe.com was the second-highest referral followed by TexAgs.com, AggieAthletics.com, TigerDroppings.com, and GatorZone.com.
The fan balloting is the first stage in determining The Bowerman winner, which will be announced in December at the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association convention held in San Antonio. Beard and Makusha each earn a first-place vote for leading the fan voting.
Next is balloting by The Bowerman Advisory Board, past winners, selected media personnel, statisticians, and collegiate administrators. An independent accounting firm will collect, tabulate, and certify the final results and will keep the result secret until the envelope is opened during the award ceremony on December 14 at the JW Marriott Hill Country.