Lady'Back signee earns television award

FAYETTEVILLE — University of Arkansas volleyball signee Caira Daugherty will be honored tomorrow by the Foundation of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences with a National Student Television Award for Excellence. Time Warner Studios is flying Daugherty to New York for the award presented on Wednesday, June 15. The winners will receive their award from CNN anchor, Soledad O’Brien, the evening’s emcee. Daugherty, who will be a freshman on the Lady Razorback volleyball team this August, and three classmates from Hillcrest High School in Springfield, Mo., entered a broadcast journalism video competition entitled the STN Sports Feature Challenge. Competitors were given a topic, time limit and were challenged to produce a video. Daugherty and her team produced a video they titled "Tackling The Challenge" about an area high school football player who was deaf. The video entries were judged against other high school entries, first regionally, where they won first place in the sports division, then on a national level. Daugherty’s team was one of six winners selected for national honors out of a pool of 177 regional winners. Daugherty was a four-time all-district and a two-time all-conference award winning volleyball player for the Hornets in Springfield, Mo. She earned the first of four academic all-conference honors as a freshman as well and was also selected as the News-Leader Athlete of the Week and as an all-conference honorable mention in her first year of high school volleyball. She repeated her academic honors as a sophomore adding academic all-state to the list for the next three years. As a junior in 2003, Daugherty led the team in block assists and was selected to several all-tournament teams. Her senior season saw Daugherty earn first-team all-conference and all-district honors. She was a member of the all-region team, an all-state nominee, academic all-conference and all-state as a senior earning News-Leader honors twice that year. She led the Hornets in hitting percentage and total blocks, earned the team’s top server award and was second in the conference in total blocks at the end of the regular season. The six national award winners in the categories of News; Arts and Entertainment, Cultural Affairs; Documentary; Public Affairs/Community Service/Public Service; Sports; Technical Achievement and Writing were chosen by a panel that included multiple Emmy Award winners, technical editors, news and sports anchors and university professors of journalism. Daugherty is the youngest of four children to Mike and Sue Daugherty of Springfield, Mo. She has two older sisters; Chrissy and Caryn; and an older brother; Mike. Daugherty plans to major in psychology with the hopes of becoming a sports psychologist after graduation.