25-time NCAA champion and Olympic gold medalist Gretchen Walsh was named the Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year and awarded the Honda Cup at a ceremony in New York City tonight.
The Honda Sports Awards, voted on by administrators from over 1,000 NCAA member schools, award the best female athlete of the year in each of the 12 NCAA-sanctioned sports. Winners of each sport become nominees for the Honda Cup, the overall best female collegiate athlete of the year. 2025 marks the 49th year of the prestigious award’s existence.
Virginia’s Walsh, who has won the swimming and diving sports award for the past two seasons and was a finalist for this overall award last year, edged out two other standout finalists: Connecticut basketball star Paige Bueckers and Texas Tech softball player NiJaree Canady. Nearly 1,000 NCAA member institutions cast votes to identify the three finalists, with the CWSA board of directors making the ultimate selection for the Honda Cup winner. The honor marks a change from the past two seasons, when Caitlin Clark claimed the award.
“I feel like I’m on cloud nine right now,” Walsh said. “Honestly, being nominated for this award last year was a big deal to me. To win it this year is obviously unreal. It’s interesting this sport, you know, it’s all year round, and it feels like it never stops. But to have these moments of knowing that all the hard work and the never-ending training is coming to fruition, and it’s worth it. It’s really nice to have this recognition and to win this award among such an amazing group of athletes. And these women, all of us, different disciplines, different sports, but just excelling in all fields, it is really cool to be represented in a group like this.”
“I feel like this is a win for swimming as well, as much as it is for myself,” Walsh added. “I feel like I always take a lot of pride in representing the people who have come before me in the sport, especially women who have, so to be amongst that list of names is so cool. I know Katie Ledecky is still swimming, but she’s always been such a great mentor for me, especially on these team trips that we take. Missy Franklin, amazing. I mean, she’s just got the personality that everyone dreams to have in such a difficult sport. And then, of course, I used to swim back in the same pool that Tracy Caulkins grew up swimming in. So that’s definitely a full circle moment for me.”
The moment Gretchen Walsh won the Honda Cup!#GoHoos | @UVA pic.twitter.com/XHKCp2rxnU
— Virginia Cavaliers (@VirginiaSports) July 1, 2025
Walsh is the second Honda Cup winner from Virginia. The first was current South Carolina women’s basketball head coach Dawn Staley, who won the award in 1991. Swimmers have won the Honda Cup nine times with Simone Manuel being the most recent winner prior to Walsh in 2018. The other swimming winners have been Jill Sterkel (1981), Tracy Caulkins (1982, 1984), Mary T. Meagher (1987), Cristina Teuscher (2000), Tara Kirk (2004), Missy Franklin (2015), and Katie Ledecky (2017).
Walsh had arguably the best season of any collegiate swimmer in history. The 22-year-old Tennessee native captured seven NCAA event titles this year, three of them individual. This brought her career total titles to 25. As the meet’s high point scorer, Walsh led UVA to a fifth straight team NCAA title. Further, she holds the fastest yards times in history in the 50 and 100 freestyles as well as the 100 backstroke and 100 butterfly.
Outside of the collegiate scene, Walsh has broken 17 world records and 38 American records throughout her swimming career. She took home four medals from the 2024 Paris Olympics, including two golds and two silvers, while helping her relay teams break two world records and setting an individual Olympic record herself.
At the Short Course World Championships this past December, Walsh swept seven events to earn the title of Best Female Swimmer. She followed that performance with a strong showing at last month’s U.S. National Championships, winning three golds and a silver to secure spots in four events at the upcoming World Championships in Singapore.
Walsh’s Honda win comes on the heels of being nominated for an ESPY for best female collegiate athlete last week.
The ESPYS are the most significant sports award show in the United States hosted by ESPN and give awards from across sports and categories. While swimmers have been nominated, and won, awards in Athlete of the Year, Olympic athlete and Athletes with a Disability categories, they have been ominously absent from the Best Collegiate Athlete Awards in recent years. The last swimmer to win the award was Missy Franklin in 2015, and the last swimmer nominated for the award was Katie Ledecky in 2018.
All 2024-25 Honda Sport Award Winners:
- Basketball: Paige Bueckers, UConn
- Cross Country: Doris Lemngole, Alabama
- Field Hockey: Maddie Zimmer, Northwestern
- Golf: Maria José Marin, Arkansas
- Gymnastics: Jordan Bowers, Oklahoma
- Lacrosse: Chloe Humphrey, North Carolina
- Soccer: Kate Faasse, North Carolina
- Softball: NiJaree Canday, Texas Tech
- Swimming & Diving: Gretchen Walsh, Virginia
- Tennis: Darja Vidmanova, Georgia
- Track & Field: Aaliyah Butler, Georgia
- Volleyball: Olivia Babcock, Pitt
atta girl Gretchen!
Yay
lol I saw them interviewing her on the TV at my gym earlier but had no idea it was for this