Female Athlete of the Year, 2025

Caitlin Clark's two-year reign as the Joe Brackets Female Athlete of the Year is over.  She's still the biggest name in women's basketball, but she missed a big portion of the WNBA season due to injury.  Which actually displayed her value even more.  The amount of time she missed can't be overlooked, though.  She wasn't even the best player in the WNBA this season.

That was A'ja Wilson, who was named AP Female Athlete of the Year.  She led the Aces to the championship, their third in four years.  In doing so, she became the first player in WNBA or NBA history to be MVP, Finals MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, scoring champion and league champion in the same season.  I seriously considered giving her the Joe Brackets award, too, but ultimately, she ended up as just a finalist.

So did another athlete I seriously considered--Aryna Sabalenka.  Sabalenka made the final at the Australian Open...and lost in three sets to Madison Keys.  She made the final at the French Open...and lost to Coco Gauff.  At Wimbledon, Amanda Anisimova played the match of her life in the semifinals and beat Sabalenka.  They met again in the US Open final, with Sabalenka winning to defend her title.  She spent the entire year ranked No. 1.

The next finalist is a name you'll be hearing a lot in about six weeks--Mikaela Shiffrin.  She won gold in the team combined at the World Championships, then became the first skier ever with 100 World Cup victories.  Shiffrin ended the 2024-25 season with another win.  So far in the 2025-26 season, there have been four slalom races, and she's won them all.  That's five in a row dating back to the final race of last season.

While we're poised to see a lot of Mikaela Shiffrin at the Milan Cortina Olympics, one of the stars of the Paris Olympics followed up that performance with a 2025 season that might've been even better.  Summer McIntosh won five medals at the World Aquatics Championships.  She set championship records in the 200 butterfly and 400 IM and also took gold in the 200 IM and 400 freestyle.  Swimming against Katie Ledecky in the 800 freestyle, McIntosh earned the bronze.  She became just the third swimmer in history with five individual medals at a World Championships.

Really, it could've been any of those four.  They were all the best in their sport in 2025.  Track & field, meanwhile, gave us Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Faith Kipyegon and Beatrice Chebet.  It could've been any of them, as well.  But I actually went with another track & field athlete as the 2025 Joe Brackets Female Athlete of the Year.  She may not be a household name, but Melissa Jefferson-Wooden is this year's deserving recipient.

Jefferson-Wooden's breakout season started early.  She was one of the first athletes to sign on with Michael Johnson's Grand Slam Track venture.  Grand Slam Track's bankruptcy and long-term viability aside, Jefferson-Wooden was easily one of the circuit's stars in its inaugural (and likely, only) season.  She was the series winner in the Short Sprints group at all three Grand Slam stops, and she was crowned the Racer of the Year.

At the inaugural Grand Slam Track event in Kingston, Jamaica, Jefferson-Wooden won both the 100 and 200.  She won the 100 again at the second meet in Miami, then ran a personal-best 21.99 seconds to beat Olympic champion Gabby Thomas in the 200 at the Philadelphia Grand Slam.  The next day, she ran a world-leading time of 10.73 seconds in the 100.  Jefferson-Wooden followed that up with a 10.75 at the Prefontaine Classic, where she beat Olympic champion Julien Alfred.

Her coming out party had only just begun.  Jefferson-Wooden lowered her personal best to 10.65 while winning gold at the U.S. Nationals.  That time made her the fifth-fastest performer ever in the women's 100.  She lowered her personal best in the 200 at Nationals, too, winning gold in 21.84.  Jefferson-Wooden then added a couple Diamond League 100-meter wins heading into the World Championships, where she was one of the clear favorites.

In the 100-meter final at Worlds in Tokyo, Jefferson-Wooden set a new personal best once again.  She set a championship record with a time of 10.61 seconds, the fourth-fastest in history.  Then in the 200 final, she ran a world-leading 21.68 seconds for her second gold of the meet.  There was one more gold medal to come.  Jefferson-Wooden was on the Americans' victorious 4x100 relay squad, completing the sprint triple.

What makes her 2025 season even more remarkable is the fact that Jefferson-Wooden didn't make the Olympic team in the 200 last year.  She did come home with two medals from Paris (bronze in the 100, gold in the relay), but her goal for 2025 was simply to improve her 100.  That's why she ran the 200 this year.  Because she thought it would help her 100.  

She was right about that.  Running the 200 did improve her 100.  But it did so much more.  It turned her into arguably the best short sprinter in the world--period!  She's never been the most heralded runner.  She's only 5'4 and attended Coastal Carolina.  In 2025, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden didn't give people a choice.  They couldn't not talk about her after she became the first American woman to win three sprint golds at Worlds and became an all-time top performer in both the 100 and 200.

And she's still just 24, so you can bet there's more to come from Melissa Jefferson-Wooden.  That's the great thing about a breakout season.  It's just the start of something special.  We obviously have no idea what lies ahead, but it's easy to envision her completing an Olympic triple in LA.  But it's also easy to envision her not having a year like this again.  Her 2025 season was that good and that historic!

For these reasons, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden gets the nod not just among track & field athletes, but above the other finalists.  She was the USA Track & Field Athlete of the Year.  And now she adds another slightly less official and not-quite-as-significant award.  Congratulations to Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, the 2025 Joe Brackets Female Athlete of the Year.