As another successful year of UC Davis athletics comes to a close, three Aggies stood above the rest and will be honored Saturday along with some of the greatest players in school history.

Distance runner Jonathan Peterson, women’s basketball star Paige Mintun and swimmer Linda Hermann earned UCD’s top athletic awards for the 2010-11 season, and will be recognized during the Cal Aggie Athletics Hall of Fame and Student-Athlete Awards Ceremonies at Freeborn Hall.

Peterson, the UCD cross country team’s first-ever NCAA Division I All-American, is the recipient of the Colby E. “Babe” Slater Award as the outstanding male athlete, while three-time All-Big West Conference honoree Mintun is the Hubert Heitman Award winner as the outstanding female athlete.

Hermann, the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Women’s Swimming and Diving Athlete of the Year, will receive the Hubert P. Lindley Award as the school’s outstanding scholar-athlete.

After finishing fifth at the West Regional, Peterson became the first Aggie male cross country runner to advance to the NCAA championships, where he took 14th.

The junior from Clovis led UCD in virtually every meet throughout the 2010 season, winning both the Hornet Jamboree and the Bronco Invitational and finishing as the Aggies’ top male runner at the Stanford Invitational. He also was crowned the Big West’s individual champion, leading the UCD men to their first league title.

Mintun capped her tremendous career by helping the Aggies to their first-ever bid to the NCAA Division I Tournament.

One of the best post players in program history, Mintun is fourth all-time in career points (1,382), eighth in rebounds (609) and steals (160), and first in blocked shots (150). She started all 33 games in 2010-11, leading UCD in scoring and rebounding, while setting a single-season record for blocks (56). Mintun also set a school mark with seven blocks in a game against Pacific.

Her efforts in helping the Aggies win the Big West tournament garnered her the event’s Most Valuable Player award and she also was named to the All-Big West first team for the third straight year.

Hermann, a senior from Solana Beach, has distinguished herself in the pool, the classroom and the Davis community. The MPSF Athlete of the Year paced UCD to the league championship, winning the 200 individual medley and the 200 freestyle, while placing second in the 200 backstroke. She set four school records as part of four different relay teams, leading the 400 and 800 free, and 400 medley relay squad to conference titles.

Hermann, who also owns the school record in the 1,000 free, is scheduled to graduate this month with a 3.72 cumulative grade-point average in exercise biology and has appeared on the UCD honor roll every quarter. She was selected as the 2011 recipient of the Ellie Gerhardy Memorial Scholarship and was chosen as the Alfred J. Hoefer Memorial Scholarship in 2009, an honor given to a student-athlete who exhibits superior academic, leadership and athletic achievement.

In addition, Hermann has volunteered with Access Kids, an after-school physical education program, at the Davis Senior Center and with the Special Olympics.

Besides the individual student awards, team honors also will be bestowed on Saturday. The Aggie men’s soccer team will receive the Lysle Leach Team Academic Award for the second time, while women’s gymnastics will be honored with the Marya Welch Team Academic Award for the third consecutive year.

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