McGowan, Mueller named Cal Maritime co-Student Athletes of the Year – Times Herald Online

Cal Maritime’s best student athletes were honored Tuesday at the Department of Athletics and Physical Education’s Athletic Awards event with women’s soccer player Kate McGowan and sailing’s Nick Mueller being named co-Student Athletes of the Year.

McGowan, a Presidential Scholarship recipient and a member of the President’s List with a 4.0 GPA, played every minute of every game for the Keelhaulers last season.

Ranked third in the nation in goalkeeper saves in 2024, the Propeller Club President is a current intern at the Center for Urban Excellence Propulsion Lab, volunteers for Molly’s Angels, a local non-profit organization that empowers seniors to lead lives filled with confidence, dignity and integrity, ensuring access to essential services and opportunities, and serves as a youth soccer referee throughout the year.

Mueller is the first Cal Maritime sailing student-athlete in the program’s recorded history to compete at last November’s Open Singlehanded National Championship — one of 17 from across the country who battled for an individual title.

Two months ago at the Mustang Open Team Race Championship, CSUM’s dinghy team captain led a crew of six Keelhaulers to its second-consecutive regatta championship, successfully defending the team’s title the CSUM finished 1-2-3 in that event’s final race to end the weekend as the only undefeated team in a field that contained significantly larger schools such as UCLA, Arizona State, Cal, UC Santa Cruz, Cal Poly and San Diego State.

Three weeks later at the Mustang Open, Mueller simply dominated competition by winning six individual races throughout the two-day competition to help Cal Maritime win this regatta by a comfortable margin.

In addition to team-specific awards presented by each head coach, embroidered blankets given to 25 graduating seniors for representing one of the university’s 16 athletic teams throughout their career, ribbons and lapel pins were received by athletes who competed for a team in their first year and senior year, respectively.

The Athletic Awards Event provided an opportunity for Director of Athletics Karen Lee Yoder to recognize Keelhauler Academic Award winners, an award bestowed to student-athletes who hold a 3.5 cumulative GPA or higher through one full year of academic coursework.

Individuals honored by Yoder include:

Men’s Basketball

Men’s Cross Country

Men’s Golf

Men’s Rugby

• Ryan Edmister
• Dillon Quinn

Men’s Soccer

• Noah Anderson
• Elijah Kadish
• Josh Kuiper

Men’s Water Polo

• Chris Frazier
• Austin Hochadel
• Kevin Kraatz
• Jacob Pickens
• Matthew Turecek
• Jack Williams

Sailing

Women’s Cross Country

• Safari Frisell
• Laura Shoaf

Women’s Rugby

• Kate Dabrow
• Mik James Harris
• Nat Pierotti

Women’s Soccer

Women’s Water Polo

• Cate Andersson
• Lanni Hardin
• Sriya Santhanam

Yoder highlighted the academic accomplishments Kuiper (men’s soccer), Lapinski (men’s cross country) and Andersson (women’s water polo) for possessing the highest GPA of a graduating senior, highest GPA among male student-athletes and the highest GPA among all student-athletes.

Comprising the 2025 Champions of Character class were:

• Yanna Albarracin (women’s golf)
• Daniel Andreyev (men’s basketball)
• Ethan Azevedo (men’s crew)
• Kate Dabrow (women’s rugby)
• Alanna Hardin (women’s water polo)
• Chris Heimann (women’s basketball)
• Kole Kammerer (sailing)
• Josh Kuiper (men’s soccer)
• Kate McGowan (women’s soccer)
• Gavin Murray (men’s rugby)
• Andrew Scannell (men’s cross country)
• Laura Shoaf (women’s cross country)
• Mason Sylvester (men’s golf)
• Matt Turecek (men’s water polo)

Cal Maritime Athletics contributed to this story.