ASHLAND – Southern Oregon softball star Riley Donovan will need to make room on a crowded shelf for one last piece of hardware after being named the Cascade Conference's Rize Laboratory Women's Athlete of the Year on Thursday.

The CCC's top annual honor is voted on by the conference's athletic directors. Donovan's gaudy statistics and title-winning finish were enough to overcome the fact that last month she was not even selected as the CCC player of the year in her own sport.

Since the inaugural award was handed out in 1995, SOU has produced five women's winners, more than any other school in the conference. Three Raiders have claimed it in the last six years alone.

Donovan was inarguably the greatest offensive force in the NAIA for the Raiders, who went 50-12 and dominated the NAIA World Series to an unprecedented degree on the way to their third championship since 2019.

After taking the NAIA Player of the Year Award in 2022, she followed up by topping the national leaderboard in home runs (23), RBIs (94), total bases (169) and slugging percentage (.977) by wide margins. She added the No. 2 batting average (.491) and the No. 3 on-base percentage (.570).

Donovan, the 2021 World Series MVP, also broke the tournament record in its current format with 11 RBIs over four games in Georgia, homering in three of them. She hit a grand slam in the final against Oregon Tech, against whom she'd launched a go-ahead solo home run in extra innings two years earlier in the championship round.

The product of Half Moon Bay, Calif., was named an NAIA All-American for the third time on Wednesday, landing first-team honors for the second consecutive season. Last June she was selected as the Oregon Sports Awards Ad Rutschman Small College Women's Athlete of the Year.

Her SOU-record career totals ended up at 59 home runs, 249 RBIs and a .473 batting average over 186 games played for the Raiders.