November 3, 2023 by Jenna Weiner in Awards with 0 comments
Ultiworld is pleased to announce our annual Club Awards, starting with the Club Player of the Year in each division. While we consider both regular season and postseason performance, because of the nature of the Club division, we weight success in the Series and at Nationals above all else. The Club Awards are voted on by Ultiworld reporters, contributors, and editors.
We begin our awards presentation with Player of the Year, our most prestigious award. Our Player of the Year winner is the best performer of the 2023 club season, and the highest vote-getter for All-Club honors. The winner is not eligible for consideration in any of our other individual awards. The runner-ups up will be identified as the second and third vote-getters when the All-Club teams are revealed.
Player of the Year Award
All-Club First Team
All-Club Second Team
Defensive Player of the Year Award
Offensive Player of the Year Award
Breakout Player of the Year Award
Coach(es) of the Year Award
Club Awards Voting Breakdown
Snubs and Superlatives
2023 Women’s Division Club Player Of The Year
Claire Trop (Washington DC Scandal)
For a sport that defies it, gravity often serves as an apt descriptive word. Sometimes through that act of defiance — whether in self-propulsion or disc-propulsion — and sometimes based on a player’s weighty pull on a game. And sometimes both, more, and all of the above.
Enter: Claire Trop.
Let’s start with Trop’s on-field gravity, the way that she bends the game around her. When the Scandal star is on the field, play tilts toward her, a well of attractive force bringing defenders and discs alike in her direction. However, in a similar manner to her solar sibling, Trop maintains law-defining control over her orbit. Put a disc up for her to rise for and she seems bound to corral it, or put your best defender on her and watch Trop find her way free time and time again.
For a Player of the Year, a 6G/13A/3B statline at Nationals may appear quite muted, but that undersells Trop’s effectiveness while she played somewhat hampered by a lingering injury. In the final, she managed a clean pair of goals and a trio of assists and an EDGE score over 4.0, and at times went nearly every-other as she tried to will her team forward. Even against the vaunted Brute Squad defense, Trop was able to get it done, just as she had done all season.
“Defense is so hard [since] even if you know someone, especially if it’s Claire Trop, you’re still going to struggle and she’s still going to be really successful,” said Brute’s Caroline Tornquist after the final, acknowledging Trop’s tour de force.
It’s been a season full of on-field excellence for the Team USA star, no more so than when she led the entire US Open field in both goals and assists. To have that kind of sway at any tournament is impressive, let alone when many of the best players in the world are competing right alongside you. But gravity draws all to it, and at her best, no one drew more to her than Trop.
