Courtesy: UCLA Athletics
SAN FRANCISCO — The Olympic Club announced late Saturday night that UCLA freshman attacker Ryder Dodd (Long Beach, Calif./JSerra Catholic HS) has been named the 2025 Peter J. Cutino Award winner. The Cutino Award is an iconic honor in NCAA water polo that recognizes the best men’s and women’s players each year.
Dodd became the first Bruin to claim the prize since attacker Nicolas Saveljic was awarded the trophy in 2021 for the 2020 season, which like the 2024 campaign, culminated with a National Championship win over USC. He is also just the fourth different Bruin and the fifth overall winner on the UCLA men’s side, joining Garret Danner who won the award in 2016, and Sean Kern, who claimed the title in 1998 and 1999, the first two Cutino Awards ever presented.
Dodd helped the Bruins (26-2) win the 2024 NCAA Men’s Water Polo Championship, the 13th in UCLA’s storied history. Named a First-Team All-American in 2024, he scored twice in the NCAA Championship game, the Bruins’ fourth win of the season over the Trojans.
The win also marked the fifth NCAA Championship for UCLA Head Coach Adam Wright while in charge of the Men’s Water Polo team, with all five titles coming against USC. It is Wright’s ninth NCAA title overall, as he also won two as a player at UCLA (1999 and 2000), one last year with the women’s program (2024), and one more as an assistant coach with the women’s team in 2009.
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Dodd wrote himself into the MPSF record books this past season when he scored a league-record 102 goals. It was also a UCLA freshman record and the second-most goals scored in school history. He also added 32 assists to lead the MPSF in scoring with 134 points. He also led the MPSF in sprints won (46) while finishing second on the Bruin squad in steals (32) and field blocks (11), and third in drawn exclusions (30). Named the ACWPC National Player of the Year, he also was chosen as the MPSF Player and Newcomer of the Year, the first person in league history to earn both honors in the same season.
Dodd, who was named the MVP of the NCAA Championship, scored in all 28 games of his rookie season, with multiple goals in all but one. A four-time MPSF weekly award honoree, earning Delfina MPSF West Player of the Week and S&R Sport Newcomer of the Week twice each, he scored a career-best eight goals in an 18-12 win at then-No. 7 Pepperdine (Oct. 12). Dodd, the only freshman on the Delfina All-MPSF First Team, is UCLA’s sixth all-time MPSF Player of the Year recipient (Rafael Real Vergara-2023, Garrett Danner-2015-16, Scott Davidson-2009, Sean Kern-2000) and is the fourth Bruin to earn MPSF Newcomer of the Year (Ben Liechty-2023, Makoto Kenney-2020, Garrett Danner-2013).
The other two finalists on the men’s side included Max Miller (USC) and Mihailo Vukazic (Pacific).
