'Fox and Friends' host, Massapequa native Brian Kilmeade gets NCAA award on air

"Fox and Friends" host Brian Kilmeade spent some time outside Fox News Studios in Manhattan on Wednesday morning, showing off some old college soccer skills.

It was far from a normal day on set for Kilmeade, a Massapequa native. During the show, the former C.W. Post Pioneers soccer player was presented with the NCAA Division II Lifetime Achievement Award.

The award was in honor of the 40th anniversary of the creation of NCAA Division II athletics. As he accepted the award, Kilmeade said he loved playing at Post, and was accepting the award on behalf of everyone who “would try extremely hard and was just OK or good.”

“I think most of us play in college and know we have to do something else after,” said Kilmeade on "Fox and Friends."

LIU Post soccer coach Andreas Lindberg also attended the presentation and ran through some drills with Kilmeade on air.

Each of the 24 conferences currently in NCAA Division II selected two former athletes from their conferences that they perceived as representative of Division II’s core values, in particular the balance of athletic ability and post-college professionalism.

Josh Looney, associate director of NCAA Division II athletics, said Kilmeade is a perfect representative of the division.

“Brian wrote down his goal in a 1982 media guide at Post, to work in television and entertain people,” he said in an interview after Kilmeade was given the award Wednesday. “He worked at his goal and accomplished it, and that’s exactly what we represent.”

Donna Orender, a fellow native Long Islander and Elmont High School graduate, also received a Lifetime Achievement Award. Orender was a college basketball star, gaining All-American status while playing point guard for Queens College before playing professionally from 1978 to 1981 in the short-lived but pioneering Women’s Basketball League.

Since leaving basketball, Orender served as a PGA executive and president of the WNBA from 2005 to 2010, according to her bio page on WNBA.com. She is now the CEO of Orender Unlimited, a marketing company.