This article is the sixth of an eight-part series. To read more about what The Ubyssey’s Sports Awards are, check out the first award here.
This one is pretty simple. Score, get points — and do it in bunches — and you’ve got a good chance to win this one. No matter the sport, you need to score in some capacity to win the game. No matter if it’s goals, touchdowns, baskets or kills, this award for Offensive Player of the Year will recognize the best player in UBC varsity sport at putting points up on the board, whether through setting up their teammates for scoring chances, or by scoring themselves.
As a refresher, each one of our beat writers from the sports team nominated one athlete for this category, then, after discussion amongst us, we voted for the winner. Reporters could not vote for their own nomination, and in the case of a tie, Caleb Peterson, the Sports & Recreation Editor, would cast the deciding vote. This was our voting committee:
- Luiza Teixeira: Women’s Hockey Reporter
- Maia Cesario: Women’s Soccer Reporter + Women’s Basketball Reporter
- Ian Cooper: Men’s Basketball Reporter
- Sofia Campanholo: Women’s Volleyball Reporter + Men’s Soccer Reporter
- Annaliese Gumboc: Football Reporter
- Caleb Peterson: Sports & Recreation Editor + Men’s Hockey Reporter
And here was our discussion.
Nominations:
(Caleb Peterson | Men’s Hockey): For Men's Hockey, I am going to nominate Sasha Mutala. You could really nominate anybody from that top line for UBC — they were kind of very obviously the straw that stirred the drink for the team. They were producing in bunches — it was very evident when you watched them out on the ice that, whenever they needed a jump, that was the line they were going to. They work very well in tandem.
Like I said, you could really pick anybody, but Mutala was the highest producer out of everyone. It's the reason why he won Canada West Player of the Year, and the reason he was third in the country in points, only a few behind the top two scorers despite playing less games. He creates offense in a way that is kind of rare for this level of hockey. He's got vision. He's got a great shot. He produces whenever he's out there. He's been one of their best players — if not the best — for the last few years. He is going to be somebody that UBC sorely misses when they take the ice next year. So he's a pretty clear Offensive Player of the Year nominee for me.
(Sofia Campanholo | Women’s Volleyball): Yeah, well, of course, I'm going to talk about Lucy Borowski. She is by far the best hitter for UBC, the best they’ve had in a long time. She was number two in Canada West for kills with 283, in just 20 games. That’s nearly four kills per set.
She was, once again, a first team all-Canadian, the only person for UBC in women's volleyball to hold that honour — just as she was last year. She has played for the national team since 2023. I just think she is by far the best player UBC has. I mean, I know they're going to be fine next year after she graduates — they have a lot of strong players. But for me, it's pretty clear that she is one of the best players to ever cross that team — she's definitely going to be very successful wherever she ends up next.
(Ian Cooper | Men’s Basketball): Mine's Nikola Guzina. He averaged over 15 points a game, and even though he was only ninth in the conference in scoring, it doesn't really give you the full picture, because he was facing double-teams pretty much anytime he touched the ball. When he was in single coverage, it was like barbecue chicken, there was just no stopping him.
The scoring numbers don’t really do justice to the impact that he had on the game and for the team’s whole offense, because he was a pretty good passer out of double-teams and was good at setting up his teammates. Without him, the offense would not be what it was.
(Annaliese Gumboc | Football): So for me, I chose Shemar McBean, the fifth year wide receiver. UBC just had an amazing wide receiver room last year. He was ninth in the nation in receptions, ninth in the nation in yards, ninth in yards per game. He was averaging 16 yards per catch, which is insane.
There were just so many games that UBC only stayed in or won where they would be doing horribly — and then they’d throw some massive pass to McBean in the red zone to keep them in it. So he, on his own, kept games alive on a pretty bleak offense.
(Maia Cesario | Women’s Basketball): I'm going to nominate Olivia Weekes. She was second in Canada West for points in the season with 335. For the whole season, she was the go-to scorer for UBC. She was producing the most points, always contesting boards, always being there for rebounds. She averaged almost a double-double a game with 16.6 points and about nine rebounds.
In her final year, she set a new career-high in scoring with a 30-point game. Overall, she was just a really strong offensive player for UBC and they could always count on her to make it count at the net.
(Luiza Teixeira | Women’s Hockey): I'm nominating Grace Elliott. I mean, there's no way I could even think about nominating anyone else. She's the back-to-back Canada West player of the year. She's been the top goal-scorer in the country for the last two years.
Perhaps most notably for this year, she broke the Canada West record for game-winning goals in a season — a record that was previously held by Hockey Hall of Fame member Hayley Wickenheiser. Something that I should mention is that, when Wickenheiser started playing in Canada West for Calgary, she was already a three-time Olympic gold medalist. Wickenheiser’s record was seven. Elliott shattered it with 12.
Verdict:
This is a no-brainer. All due respect to the players here that carried their team’s offences — but Grace Elliott is on another level. Here are the voting results:
- Women’s Hockey: Grace Elliott – 5
- Men’s Hockey: Sasha Mutala – 1
- Women’s Volleyball: Lucy Borowski – 0
- Men’s Basketball: Nikola Guzina – 0
- Football: Shemar McBean – 0
- Women’s Basketball: Olivia Weekes – 0
(Caleb Peterson | Sports + Rec Editor): While not technically unanimous like our Women’s Rugby pick was, since Luiza couldn’t vote for her own nomination, this was essentially unanimous — and for good reason. Elliott has been arguably the best women’s hockey player in U Sports over the past two years, and while she had slightly fewer points this year, she’s still producing at over a point-and-a-half-per-game clip.
Putting yourself in conversation with Wickenheiser, who has a very strong case to be considered the greatest women’s hockey player ever, can’t be downplayed. And Elliott didn’t just come close to her record — she nearly doubled it. As Luiza pointed out, Wickenheiser got that record while she was still in the prime of her career — Elliott is only going to get better from here. The actual content of that record is notable as well. With her knack for game-winners, she continually came through when her team needed it. They don’t get to a conference-record 26 victories without her.
She’s just dominant in every sense possible. Elliott is bigger than nearly everyone on the ice and can impose her will with her physicality — but she also has a scorer’s touch, with elite offensive vision and a pro-level shot. As the top goal-scorer in the country, she attracted more than the requisite level of attention from her opponents, who routinely threw everything they had at her to knock her off her game. It didn’t work.
Last year, T-Birds forward Chanreet Bassi became the first T-Bird ever drafted to the PWHL, going with the final pick in the draft, 48th overall to the hometown Vancouver Goldeneyes. With Elliott being draft-eligible this year, it would be surprising if she didn’t go even earlier — with a legitimate chance to make an impact for whichever team selects her.
“I think she should be going in the top two or three rounds,” her head coach, Graham Thomas, told us in an interview earlier this year. “[If she] keeps playing the way she's playing, just with her size, physicality, skating ability and sense, there's no doubt in my mind that she's ready to play at that level and that she can play in the PWHL next season.”
