Celebrating the best off-field leaders of the season.
June 23, 2025 by Felicia Zheng and Edward Stephens 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 final D-I award podium is for the Coaches of the Year. As so many teams have added more and more sideline-savvy consultants to their roster with less asked of a single head coach, this has essentially morphed into “Coaching Staff of the Year.” Coaches can impact the game in so many ways — tactics, motivation, communication, personnel management, program development, skill-building, etc. — and it can be hard to divine what exactly each has contributed to their team. But good coaching is something that we feel that ‘we know it when we see it.’
- 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 Coaches Of The Year
Edward Guo, Victoria Lam, Jonathan He (British Columbia)
When you picture a well-coached team in your mind, what qualities do you envision? A reliable offensive scheme that opens up lots of space and results in plenty of continuation looks, no doubt. Sprinkle in a clear, effective red zone scoring plan to make sure you’re finishing off points. On the other side of the ball, you’ll want to see a small army of hungry defenders — as well as a scheme that minimizes attractive passing windows. You will probably imagine that they attack confidently in transition, with multiple players capable of leading a scoring drive, to convert breaks.
What about intangibles? Visible and consistent effort is a must. Another expectation: playing as hard as possible all the way through the end of the game, no matter how close the score is. The team needs to respond well to disappointment, sealing off losses so that they don’t creep into the team’s psyche in a negative way. The final piece, of course, is rising when pushed to the limit, both as individuals and en masse.
What you have painted in your head is the 2025 Thunderbirds, national champions for the mental game they cultivated no less than for their prodigious on-field talent. They were a phenomenon all season long in the way they attacked the field. Their lone real loss1 — a bad one to Colorado at Northwest Challenge — could have dampened their spirits, but instead they came back stronger. They could have crumbled on defense on universe point in the national final when Carleton had a shot at the end zone, but instead they soared. It was a tremendous performance from the coaching staff to keep them ready for every eventuality, and it earns them this season’s top honor.
– Edward Stephens
Co-Runner-Up
Jillian Goodreau, Taylor Hartman, Julia Snyder, Nora Landry (Washington)
At Ultiworld we have often admired the Stanford coaching staff for the way they ramp up their seasons to peak at Nationals. This year, though, Washington Element took that mantle and ran with it all the way to an unexpected run to semis. Distinct offensive and defensive units were each powerful engines in their own right as the Element coaches steadfastly refused to succumb to the temptation of frequent crossover play. The upshot was a fully-fledged game plan and legs that stayed fresh, allowing the whole team to get in on the highlight-reel party — seriously, Element players went horizontal more often than any other team in the division — without sacrificing their fundamentals or team movement. The scary part for the rest of the division is that the work the coaches did to prepare the team for the 2025 campaign should pay dividends into 2026 given the fact that they will return so many players.
– Edward Stephens
Co-Runner-Up
Courtney Kiesow, Logan Weiss, Lou Burruss (Carleton)
Carleton’s strength this year can be attributed to the incredible depth of talent and experience on the team, but their ability to thrive was truly shaped by the coaching staff. Kiesow and Weiss were at the helm, masterminding an offense that put all of the unique pieces together to create a potent attack that could win in many different ways. Syzygy were comfortable grinding unders and working give-gos, but also opportunistic with hucks and big plays. Bringing on Burruss for Nationals brought another experienced voice into the cockpit. Going into the tournament, Carleton weren’t the number one seed but they were certainly the team to watch, having gone undefeated at Northwest Challenge. The coaching team’s ability to keep energy and performance steady through the ups and downs of the longest, most important tournament of the year is a testament to their leadership and makes them outstanding runners-up for Coaches of the Year.
– Felicia Zheng
UBC lost two games in 2025, but one was meaningless because they had already clinched their pool at Nationals ↩
