SwimSwam’s Official Ballot for the 2025 Golden Goggles Awards

USA Swimming has released the nominees for its annual 2025 awards show. The list has been reduced to just five awards, which in classic USA Swimming fashion has eliminated most of the more interesting debates for winners.

Still, while some of the choices are pretty straight forward, I think there are a handful where there could be differing perspectives, even where the winner is pretty clear.

• Vote in the online ballot here.

As a bonus, we’ve also thrown in names of who would be our votes if the other four categories were still on the ballot.

Remember that the awards are selected almost entirely off performances at the Operation Gold meet of the season. We’ll note where we think an athlete did enough outside of that meet to earn the award.

Actual Awards

Female Athlete of the Year

Nominees:

• Katharine Berkoff
• Kate Douglass
• Katie Ledecky
• Gretchen Walsh SwimSwam’s Pick)

There are two genuine choices in my mind here. Ledecky earned her seventh consecutive world championship title in the 800 freestyle. Walsh had a breakthrough meet at Worlds with a sprint double gold in the 50 and 100 butterfly.

Extending this to a true “Of the Year” rather than “Of the Meet” award only helps break the tie a bit. Both swimmers broke World Records at the Pro Swim Series meet in Fort Lauderdale in May: Ledecky in the 800 free and Walsh in the 100 fly (neither rebroke it at the biggest meets of the year).

But since we’re really going “Of the Year,” that should include everything since last year’s selections were made – including Walsh’s otherworldly performance at the World Short Course Swimming Championships in December. She set 11 World Records, the most at a single meet in history.

Even if you don’t like that argument, Walsh’s presence on the World Record breaking women’s 400 medley relay is a valid tie breaker keeping within the confines of the World Championships.

(But I also think USA Swimming will choose Ledecky).

Male Athlete of the Year

Nominees:

• Jack Alexy
• Shaine Casas
• Luke Hobson
• Luca Urlando (SwimSwam’s Pick)

This one is pretty clear-cut how it’s going to go. The U.S. only won a single gold medal in a men’s event at the World Championship, and it was Urlando’s 200 fly.

I think there’s a case to be made for Alexy’s five medal performance that included a 46.91 leadoff leg on the World Record Mixed 400 free relay and a heroic 45.95 anchor to salvage a medal for the men’s 400 medley relay. As much as I want to, I won’t go against the grain here.

Coach of the Year

Nominees:

• Bob Bowman
• Todd DeSorbo (SwimSwam’s Pick)
• Anthony Nesty

This award clearly goes to Bowman if we’re counting everything all year long, plus performances of international swimmers trained under American coaches.

But since that’s definitely not the criteria, I think DeSorbo’s women (both Douglass and Gretchen Walsh won individual gold medals) carried a bit more for Team USA than did Nesty’s crew (Ledecky’s golds with his other star, Bobby Finke, winning 1 bronze).

This would be a second-straight award for DeSorbo.

Fran Crippen Open Water Athlete of the Year

Nominees:

• Mariah Denigan (SwimSwam’s Pick)
• Dylan Gravley
• Brinkleigh Hansen
• Ivan Puskovitch

Just the third year of this award, the only swimmer to have won it so far (Katie Grimes) wasn’t nominated this year.

The U.S. didn’t win any medals in open water, and their best finisher in the premier 10km open water race Joey Tepper was strangely not nominated for this award.

Gravley, Denigan, and Puskovitch (who was 7th in the knockout) all have a claim to this. I guess I’d go with Denigan for her overall body of work (13th in the 5k, 14th in the 10k, 17th in the knockout), but willing to accept Puskovitch as well even though he wasn’t entered in the 10k.

Relay Performance of the Year

Nominees:

• Mixed 4×100 m Freestyle Relay – World Record
• Women’s 4×100 m Medley Relay – World Record

Whelp that’s a depressingly short list.

Both were great swims, but I think the answer is clear cut. That women’s 400 medley might be one of the best medley relays soup-to-nuts that has ever been assembled. Just pencil them in for this award every year between now and LA2028.

Bonus Awards

• Perseverance Award, Luca Urlando – With all due respect to the swimmers who contracted gastrointestinal illness in Thailand and Singapore, if ever there were a year to give this award, 2025 is it. Urlando was a star age grouper whose career was derailed by some very public shoulder injuries. Him showing up and being the savior for the American men at the World Championships in the 200 butterfly shows the resilience of not only the human body, but the human spirit.
• Female Race of the Year, Katie Ledecky – Since this is just pretend, and I don’t have to be bound by the whole ‘only one meet matters’ mentality, I’m actually going to give it to her Ft. Lauderdale World Record in the 800 free (with her Worlds 800 free being 2nd, just because of the moment and the pressure and the battle). Almost a decade ago we started writing about how female distance swimmers very rarely get faster in their 20s, and here she is setting World Records at almost 30. Rewriting the reference book is GOAT behavior.
• Male Race of the Year, Luca Urlando – I’m starting to maybe understand why they cut back on some awards. It could touch on a sensitive subject if Luca Urlando just kept winning because the men didn’t have a great performance at the World Championships.
• Breakout Performer of the Year, Campbell McKean – In the United States’ most-dire event, McKean’s 58.96 in the 100 breaststroke at US Nationals was a light at the end of the tunnel. That made him the youngest swimmer in history from any nation to break 59 seconds in the event. His times were off at the World Championships (as is the norm for swimmers who have such a seismic breakthrough at US Trials, even without accounting for any illness), that’s now something to rebuild the medley relays around for the future.