Ole Miss Athletes Nicole Gal, Mason Hickel Win SEC Community Service Awards
Two Ole Miss student-athletes have been honored with the Southeastern Conference’s Brad Davis Community Service Award for the 2025-26 season. Nicole Gal of women’s golf and Mason Hickel of men’s track and field received the awards, the SEC announced Thursday.
The award recognizes one male and one female student-athlete from each of the SEC’s 16 schools. School winners are nominees for the league’s Community Service Leaders of the Year Award, which will be announced later in May. Winners receive postgraduate scholarships, with the school winners earning $7,500 and the Leaders of the Year receiving $15,000, both funded by the SEC.
Gal and Hickel participated in numerous community service initiatives. Their efforts include Adopt-A-Basket, which donates Thanksgiving baskets to local families; Feed the Sip, a food sustainability project; Reading with the Rebels, a literacy program; Trunk or Treat, a Halloween event for children; and volunteer work with the Area 4 Special Olympics.
Gal, a senior from Oakville, Ontario, majors in exercise science. She competed in all nine regular season events for Ole Miss women’s golf, with a top-10 finish at the Canadian Collegiate Invitational. She posted six rounds of even or below par and has 48 birdies in 23 rounds. Gal also serves on the Ole Miss Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and participated in Oxford’s National Girls and Women in Sports Day.
Hickel, a redshirt senior from Phoenix, Arizona, has been a consistent presence on Ole Miss’s throws team. He is a three-time NCAA East Region qualifier and SEC scorer. Last outdoor season, he earned honorable mention All-American honors in the hammer. Academically, he is a two-time USTFCCCA All-Academic honoree and was named CSC Academic All-District in 2025. Hickel graduated in May 2025 with a degree in pharmaceutical science and is pursuing a pharmacy doctorate.
The SEC’s Brad Davis Community Service Award is named after former associate commissioner Brad Davis, who died of cancer in 2006. Davis served the SEC from 1988 until his death, first as an assistant commissioner and later as associate commissioner.
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