Celebrating the best off-field leaders of the season.
June 23, 2026 by Zack Davis 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-III 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 we feel “we know it when we see it.”
- All-American First Team
- Player of the Year
- All-American Second Team
- Offensive Player of the Year Award
- Defensive Player of the Year Award
- Breakout Player of the Year Award
- Rookie of the Year Award
- Coaches of the Year Award
- Full Awards Voting Breakdown
D-III Women’s 2026 Coaches Of The Year
Emma Nicosia, Christopher O’Mara, Yuriko Vaughan, AC Sydney Mier (Carleton Eclipse)
All year there was a constant mystery over who was the driving force on the field for Eclipse. The faceless army went on a tear on both the east and west coasts, and it’s thanks to this coaching staff that a team we discounted in the preseason as outside the top 10 was able to accomplish this.
After losing stars like Rowan Dong and Frankie Saraniti, Carleton was looking for their next star to step up. But rather than the traditional form of game planning around one star, Nicosia helped develop a multitude of role players and turned them into an elite core of players that can find their own space on the field. Brown, Monks, Morse-deBrier, Andruet, Horstman Olson, the list goes on and on.
Apart from an early exit from bracket play in 2025, with semifinal or better appearances in the 2020s, Carleton Eclipse has been a force to be reckoned with. They continued to exceed high expectations in 2026, securing their pool this year and taking the defending national champions to universe in quarters. This team will be around for a while, and as long as such capable hands lead the crew, Eclipse will very much be contenders.
– Zack Davis
First Runner-Up
Keith Raynor (Wesleyan)
Under penalty of unemployment we at Ultiworld were forced to uplift our glorious leader to the COTYium once more.
There’s something to be said about Keith Raynor’s ability to walk along the line between traditional coaching and the player-led pathos that pervades D-III ultimate and was traditionally the way of the Wesleyan Vicious Circles. Raynor is not the center of the team, nor the leader. A circle has no points, and Raynor is only a part of the larger curve. However, his influence has clearly benefited the Circles, who made the semifinal stage this year and took Whitman to the brink despite graduating a significant cast. Raynor focuses the great talent of the Wesleyan roster and elevates it to more than just a sum of its parts with clear and direct communication and, most importantly, confidence in the team.
– Zack Davis
Second Runner-Up
Ashley Shelor and Emma Wine (Rice)
Ashley Shelor started coaching Rice Torque in 2015, and led them to their second championship in as many years. Now, 11 years later she and Rice returned, for the sixth time during her 11 years. Torque finished sixth overall, their best finish since their 2016 silver medal. Shelor is assisted by Emma Wine, who joined Torque in 2015 alongside Shelor, but as a player. Now a decade later, Shelor and Wine guided this scrappy 14 person roster to a quarterfinals berth, scoring more against eventual champions Middlebury than every other team at the tournament bar Wesleyan. Obviously having the Player of the Year on your team is a blessing any coach dreams of, but Shelor and Wine constructed a team around Stevens that was capable of not just winning, but competing against the very best.
– Zack Davis
