These players put everyone on notice
November 15, 2024 by Graham Gerhart, Zack Davis and Felicia Zheng in Awards with 0 comments
Ultiworld is pleased to announce our annual Club Awards. 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. This year, with an uneven regular season, the postseason emphasis is perhaps greater than ever. The Club Awards are voted on by Ultiworld reporters, contributors, and editors.
Our Breakout Player of the Year may be the hardest-to-define award that we dole out each year. We aim to recognize players typically 25 years old or younger who weren’t widely expected to have a major impact on the club season at the start of the year. While their teammates or local community may have known about their talent level, their performance in the 2024 season thrust them into the national consciousness in a way that raises expectations for their contributions for years to come. Without strict parameters around what constitutes “too well known” at the start of the year, our voters are given the opportunity to decide for themselves who best represented their definition of a true breakout season in the club division.
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
2024 Women’s Division Breakout Player of the Year
Marie Périvier (Washington DC Scandal)
It has been a long time since Marie Périvier first played in club ultimate’s premier event. She made her Nationals debut as a junior in high school in 2017 with Atlanta Ozone. Then… nothing. She stayed away from the Big Dance until this season.1 What a return. Elite club didn’t know what it was missing.
Périvier logged 6G/13A/4B at Nationals, tying Player of the Year Claire Trop for most assists on Scandal. The keys to her game? Flexibility and grace under pressure. Of course one could argue having teammates like Claire Trop and Kami Groom to throw to makes it a lot easier, but it’s clear from the tape that Perivier didn’t simply rely on Trop and Groom to make a play. Rather, she often dropped the disc in receivers’ breadbaskets, giving them more energy for a vicious celly. Moreover, Périvier was able to step up and make highlight plays herself, contributing immensely to Scandal’s high-powered offense. It frequently fell to Périvier to step up and make the play while Groom and Trop were swamped by defensive pressure, and she had no problem in doing so, taking the space offered by the defense and converting it into goals.
Given Périvier’s success at the college level with Georgia,2 it would not have been surprising to see her reach a high level of play in club at some point. The immediacy and extent of her impact in this welcome-back season, though, were simply too special to ignore.
– Zack Davis
First Runner-up
Trout Weybright (Portland Schwa)
Every year there’s another player who “takes the leap” for Schwa. One could argue the team is built on role players who all “took the leap” at some point in their careers. For Weybright, that leap was a sure bet. Weybright’s introduction to club ultimate was like watching a long jump athlete prepare their run-up: you know the leap’s coming.
Who knew it was going to be this fast and this impactful, though? Weybright was one of the primary reasons Portland outperformed expectations in pool play at Nationals and had the season they did. The stats speak for themselves: 15G/22A/4B while playing the best teams the world has to offer. Schwa’s development of their young talent was on full display with Weybright, and shows promise for a program that continues to edge their way closer to a spot in the final.
– Graham Gerhart
Second Runner-up
Chloe Hakimi (Seattle Riot)
18 is young to be the stat leader for a national quarterfinals team, but Chloe Hakimi is no stranger to playing on the big stage. Her impressive range of throws and game sense completely opened up the field for Riot, powering the team to a deep postseason run. What stood out most was the sheer confidence with which she played, hitting audacious windows with ease. Going 4G/13A/5B on the weekend, Hakimi showcased her ability to dominate in multiple facets of the game. Is it too early to crown her the talent of her generation? Maybe,3 but she certainly puts together a convincing resume. If you somehow didn’t know Hakimi’s name before, learn it now. She will undoubtedly be one of the most exciting players in the world to watch for years to come.
– Felicia Zheng
Between skipping a couple of Ozone’s ensuing Nationals trips, playing for an upper regionals-level mixed team, and taking time off to pursue other interests, it just wasn’t in the cards. ↩
Two All-American selections in only three full seasons, since Périvier didn’t take any extra Covid or 5th-year eligibility ↩
Especially since her early debut means that we have not seen most of the players in her generation in action yet. ↩
