St. LOUIS -- Missouri State's Lily Johnson is the female recipient of the Missouri Valley Conference's Dr. Charlotte West Scholar-Athlete Award, league commissioner Doug Elgin announced Wednesday. The MVC Faculty Athletics Representatives Committee selected Johnson and Illinois State track and field athlete Connor Ehnle from a field of league student-athletes who met the award criteria, including academic achievement, athletics excellence, and service and leadership.

Johnson is MSU's fourth winner since the award began in 2000, joining Jackie Stiles (women's basketball, 2001), Katie Martin (softball, 2007) and Heath Melugin (men's soccer, 2012) on the prestigious list.

Johnson completed her outstanding volleyball career last fall, earning AVCA All-American honors for the fourth consecutive season as a Third Team pick, and being named the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Academic All-America® of the Year. She concluded her career ranked second in NCAA history in career attacks (6,610), third in consecutive sets played (519), and 19th in kills (2,293), all MSU and MVC records. She is also one of 10 players in NCAA history with at least 2,200 kills and 1,500 digs.

A native of Wildwood, Mo., Johnson graduated in May with a cell and molecular biology degree. She was a recipient of MSU's Citizen Scholar Award, the most prestigious honor a student can receive at Missouri State, and spent three years as the chair of the MVC's Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, including a two-year stint as the league representative on the NCAA SAAC.

The first-ever recipient of the Honda Award of Merit in 1996 for outstanding achievement in women's collegiate athletics, Dr. Charlotte West was a driving force for more than 40 years in the area of advancement of women's sports. On June 30, 1998, she retired from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, after serving in the capacities of head coach, associate athletics director, interim athletics director and senior woman administrator during her 41 years with the Missouri Valley Conference-member institution. West coached five women's sports from 1957-75 and, in 1982, was among the first group of women inducted into the SIUC Athletics Hall of Fame. She was inducted into the Missouri Valley Conference Hall of Fame in 2005 and the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2014. SIU named its softball stadium after West in 2003 and the NCAA named a room in its new national office building in Indianapolis in West's honor in 2012.

During her tenure at SIUC, she became the first female member of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) and later served on the organization's board of directors. West was also a president of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW). In 1991, she was presented with the Administrator of the Year Award by the National Association of Collegiate Women Administrators. West also received the Administrator of the Year Award, given by the Women's Basketball Coaches Association.