These big time scorers helped ensure their offenses would keep the points flowing.
June 17, 2025 by Edward Stephens and Graham Gerhart in Awards
Each year, Ultiworld presents our annual College Awards. Our staff evaluates the individual performances of players from throughout the season, talking to folks around college ultimate, watching film, and look at statistics, voting upon the awards to decide those to be honored. The regular season and the college Series are both considered, with extra emphasis for performances in the competitive and high-stakes environment at Nationals.
Our awards continue with the Offensive Player of the Year, recognizing the individual, and two runners-up, who we felt had the most impactful and productive seasons helping their teams score. They set up goals, finished off points, and produced yardage at consistently high levels against the top defenders.
- Player of the Year
- All-American First Team
- All-American Second Team
- Defensive Player of the Year Award
- Offensive Player of the Year Award
- Rookie of the Year Award
- Breakout Player of the Year Award
- Coaches of the Year Award
- Full Awards Voting Breakdown
D-I Women’s 2025 Offensive Player Of The Year
Chagall Gelfand (Carleton)
‘Control’ is the word that comes to mind when remembering Chagall Gelfand’s monumental 2025 season with Carleton Syzygy. It starts with the division’s sharpest forehand. You could lance a boil with the pinpoint accuracy of a Gelfand away flick. Or you could use it, as she so often did while racking up a staggering 29 assists at Nationals, to mush the Syzygy offense to the end zone time and time again.
As iconic as the Gelfand forehand became in 2025, though, her absolute mastery of the art of offense extended so much further than a single throw. There are some players a coach will have to exhort from the sideline to take ownership of a possession — and there are some, like Gelfand, who carry such a powerful sense of responsibility that you know you never have to say a word. She was always there, always ready: moving the ball, moving her defender, moving her receivers, finding the reset space, leaving her feet, attacking, attacking, attacking. If there was a play to be made, you could be sure Gelfand would make it. If there was a yard to be gained, you could, in perfect serenity, bet your life savings Gelfand would gain it (and then some).
Just in case you still have any reservations, take a look at her play in the two biggest games of the season, the semifinal and final at Nationals. Guarded by 2025 Defensive Player of the Year and First Runner-Up Laurens Goddu and Szeto-Fung for almost every point she played, she both controlled Syzygy’s offense and was totally uncontrollable, posting an eye-popping 2-goal, 13-assist line over the two games.
– Edward Stephens
Co-Runner-Up1
Devin Quinn (UC Santa Barbara)
Quinn has been one of the preeminent cutters in the Southwest since her rookie season, but when UC Santa Barbara graduated a number of their best throwers in 2024, she took on an oversized role in 2025. After injuries sidelined her for the start of the season, Quinn started making herself known as THE player to beat in the cutting space. Teams ran zones, handler sags, and poaches all to contain Quinn, and it still rarely worked. The Burning Skirts star was everything her team needed her to be — including a catalog of effortless grabs that could fill an entire highlight reel. No one knew what the ceiling would be for this UC Santa Barbara team at the start of the year, but by the end, it was clear that Quinn was enough to raise the roof alone.
– Graham Gerhart
Co-Runner-Up2
Laura Blume (UC Santa Barbara)
Callahan, schmallahan. You can have your talk of spirit and leadership. As for us, we’ll take the real joy of Laura Blume’s 2025 season: watching her full-send shredding of every defense thrown at her. Nobody in college, in any division, pressed the pedal to the metal as continuously as Blume did, to the point that her myriad miracles of field vision, throwing power, and horizontal flights became, like the rising of the sun or the migration of birds, commonplace wonders. But as normal as it all became to see her whip up a whirlwind on the field, please, reader, do not take Blume’s endless motor or her wiliness or her tenaciousness for granted. It was a truly special season from an absolutely unique gem of a player.
– Edward Stephens
