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sports Monday 28 deceMber 2020

Activist, champion: Naomi Osaka is AP Female Athlete of Year

By HOWARD FENDRICH “She successfully com- of Osaka’s season came
AP Tennis Writer pleted the difficult task of in August and September,
With tennis, like so much of taking excellence in sports when she compiled an
the world, shut down be- performance and using 11-match winning streak
cause of the coronavirus that platform to succeed that included the U.S.
pandemic, Naomi Osaka outside of sports on a much Open. It was during a tune-
found herself with time to bigger stage,” King told up tournament in New York
read and think. the AP. “She ignited a con- that Osaka — whose father
And while she won the U.S. versation on social justice, is Haitian and mother is
Open for her third Grand the results of which were Japanese — declared she
Slam title, she also stood bigger than tennis, larger would not play her semi-
out for speaking out about than sports, and in doing so final, joining athletes from
racial injustice and police raised the bar for all those the NBA and elsewhere in
brutality. who want to leverage the protesting the police shoot-
As noteworthy in 2020 for gifts and talents we have ing of Blake.
her activism away from the to make a difference in our “There are clearly so many In this Sept. 12, 2020, file photo, Naomi Osaka, of Japan, holds
tennis court as her success world.” worthy issues. This one es- up the championship trophy after defeating Victoria Azarenka,
on it, Osaka was selected Osaka went 16-3 during the pecially resonated with of Belarus, in the women’s singles final of the U.S. Open tennis
by The Associated Press as coronavirus-truncated ten- me because of my own tournament in New York. Associated Press
the Female Athlete of the nis calendar — the profes- personal up-bringing; and
Year in results revealed sional tours took about a also while the tennis tour reached boiling point,” “Her activism has shone a
Sunday after a vote by AP five-month hiatus; Wimble- was paused, I was able to Osaka said. “It was the right light on how we as individu-
member sports editors and don was canceled for the watch and read news at time for me to speak up.” als and sports leagues can
AP beat writers. first time since 1945 — and length for the first time in Taking her lead, that tour- collectively make an im-
“It was difficult to be isolat- ended the year ranked my life. This summer in the nament shut down com- pact,” WTA Chairman and
ed from my family for large No. 3. The defining stretch U.S., tensions were high and pletely for a day. CEO Steve Simon said. q
parts of the year, but that’s
nothing compared to oth-
ers. It was sad to watch
and read the news of
people suffering from CO-
VID-19, and the economic
and social effect on so
many — losing jobs, mental
health. It was such a tough
year for so many people,”
Osaka wrote in an email in-
terview. “And then watch-
ing the police injustices like
George Floyd, Breonna
Taylor and Jacob Blake
(to name just a few) in the
summer broke my heart. I
am proud of my U.S. Open
victory, but more so that I
got people talking about
the real issues.”
Osaka collected 18 of 35
first-place votes and a to-
tal of 71 points.
WNBA Finals MVP Breanna
Stewart was next with nine
first-place votes and 60
points, followed by Sarah
Fuller, the Vanderbilt soc-
cer player who kicked for
the school’s football team,
with one first-place vote
and 24 points.
LeBron James was an-
nounced Saturday as the
AP Male Athlete of the
Year.
Billie Jean King, a 12-time
Grand Slam singles title
winner and a pioneering
advocate for decades,
praised Osaka for position-
ing “herself as a leader not
only in women’s tennis but
in all of sports and a force
for change in our society.”