Female Athlete of the Year, 2023

As 2023 comes to a close, everybody is releasing their various year-end best-of lists.  That's what I'll be doing throughout this week (with a set of NFL picks mixed in).  Today, I'll get it started with the Female Athlete of the Year.

Before announcing the winner, let's first meet the five finalists, starting with Simone Biles.  Biles returned to competition in 2023 for the first time since the Tokyo Olympics.  She didn't miss a beat.  At her first event, the U.S. Classic in August, she won the all-around by five points.  Biles then won her eighth U.S. all-around crown, becoming the oldest woman to win the title.

Then, at the World Championships, she made the final in all four apparatus and was the top qualifier in three of the four.  Biles led the U.S. to gold in the team event by more than two points, then won her sixth world all-around title.  She added two golds and a silver in the event finals, finishing the World Championships with five medals and reaffirming her status as the greatest female gymnast in history, as well as the favorite in Paris.

Next up is Aitana Bonmati.  Spain, of course, won its first-ever Women's World Cup title with a 1-0 victory over England in the final.  Bonmati received the Golden Ball as tournament MVP, which was absolutely the right call.  Because she was absolutely the best player in the tournament.  Bonmati scored three goals in the tournament, including two in a 5-1 victory over Switzerland in the round of 16.  Spain's World Cup triumph is made even more remarkable because of the well-publicized strike Bonmati and 14 other players engaged in because of their grievances with the National Team (not to mention what happened after the World Cup).  Of those 15, she was one of only three who were on the World Cup roster.  

For Bonmati, the World Cup was just the icing on the cake.  She also collected plenty of awards during the 2022-23 club season.  She received the Ballon d'Or Femenin and was named UEFA Women's Player of the Year after leading Barcelona to both its fourth straight Spanish Primera Division championship and the Women's Champions League title, earning Champions League Player of the Season honors for her five goals in the tournament.  According to Nike, she had "The best season.  Of any footballer.  Ever."  A bit of an exaggeration perhaps, but the point is well-taken.

Someone else who had a season for the ages in 2022-23 was Caitlin Clark.  Name an award, she won it.  AP Player of the Year, Naismith Trophy, Wade Trophy, Wooden Award, Sullivan Trophy, Honda Cup, USBWA National Player of the Year.  And her run in the NCAA Tournament, where she led Iowa to the National Championship Game, was something extraordinary indeed.  She scored 191 points in six games, including back-to-back 40-point efforts.  Clark had a 41-point triple-double against Louisville to get Iowa to its first Final Four in 30 years, then had 41 in a National Semifinal upset of previously undefeated South Carolina.

After scoring more than 1,000 points while also leading the nation in assists last season, Clark came back for her senior year, and she has a very realistic chance of passing Pete Maravich for the most points in NCAA history--men or women.  She's a generational talent who single-handedly has made Iowa women's basketball the hottest ticket in town.  In October, the Hawkeyes played a preseason exhibition game in the football stadium.  The game set a women's basketball attendance record--55,646.

Choosing between Femke Bol and Faith Kipyegon as the track & field finalist was extremely hard.  I wanted to name both of them finalists.  But, ultimately, I decided to go with the one who was named (along with two others) World Athlete of the Year.  Faith Kipyegon.  The Kenyan who won two World Championships and set three world records in 2023.

Kipyegon broke the world record in the 1500 meters at the Rome Diamond League meet on June 2.  Exactly a week later at the Paris Diamond League, she took more than a second off the 5000-meter mark.  Then on July 21 in Monaco, Kipyegon ran the mile in 4:07.64 for her third world record in a third different event over a span of seven weeks.  She capped the year by completing a 1500-5000 double at the World Championships.

Finally, we have Mikaela Shiffrin, who shook off her disappointment at the 2022 Olympics with a record-setting 2022-23 season.  In March, she won her 87th career World Cup race, breaking the all-time record held by Swedish great Ingemar Stenmark.  Shiffrin has since increased that number to 91, and it's very likely that she'll have well over 100 World Cup wins when all is said and done.  It's quite possible she'll have already hit the century mark by the time the Milan Cortina Olympics roll around.

In addition to breaking Stenmark's record, Shiffrin was the overall season champion.  She was also the season champion in both the slalom and giant slalom.  At the World Championships, Shiffrin won gold in the giant slalom (remarkably, for the first time in her career) and silver in the slalom and Super G.  It was the third straight World Championships in which she medaled in three different disciplines.  That versatility led to Stenmark's declaration that Shiffrin is much better than he ever was.

An argument can be made for any of the five to get the nod, but I'm not gonna do that.  So, who will it be then?  I kept going back and forth between Clark and Kipyegon before ultimately settling on my choice.  Joining Sydney McLaughlin, the inaugural winner in 2022, on the list of the prestigious Joe Brackets Female Athlete of the Year award recipients is the University of Iowa's CAITLIN CLARK.

It's hard to describe just how remarkable Clark's year was.  What she did in the NCAA Tournament is unlike anything we'll ever see again (unless she has a repeat performance in 2024).  And she seems to thrive on the pressure, too.  No stage is too big.  In fact, I think the bigger the stage, the better she performs.  Caitlin Clark's just that type of player.  She would've been the top pick in the WNBA Draft had she not decided to return to Iowa, and the Indiana Fever (who own the No. 1 pick this April) probably already have No. 22 Clark jerseys in production.

Caitlin Clark has more to do at Iowa first, though.  And the unanimous 2022-23 National Player of Year has started her 2023-24 campaign in much the same way.  She scored her 3,000th point on Dec. 6, and it's very likely she'll also end up with 1,000 career assists.  But that's for 2024.  What she's done in 2023 (which includes one more game against Minnesota on Dec. 30), meanwhile, has been nothing short of spectacular.