Historic English Channel Ultra-Swim
Colorado Sportswoman of the Year
Mikaela Shiffrin 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018
Our Sportswoman of the Year became the first woman to win three slalom World Championship golds in a row. In December, Shiffrin celebrated a World Cup slalom win in Killington, Vermont with her 95-year-old grandmother, Nana cheering her on. Mikaela then headed west to...
Emma Coburn and Jenny Simpson 2016
For the first time ever, Sportswomen of Colorado named two Sportswomen of the Year. Our Sportswomen of the Year are two of America's best runners. Emma and Jenny have each won three SWOC Track and Field awards and are in our Hall of Fame. Additionally, Jenny is the...
Mikaela Shiffrin 2015
Our Sportswoman of the Year won her second World Championship title in Slalom in 2015. The reigning Olympic Champion, she had her first World Cup win ever in Giant Slalom. Since February of 2015, Mikaela won all seven of the slaloms she competed in.
Cindy Hill 1974
How did a 26-year-old golfer from Colorado Springs gain the distinction of being Sportswomen of Colorado’s inaugural Sportswoman of the Year? She collected a lot of trophies. In 1974, Cindy won the revered USGA Women’s Amateur Championship, played on the winning...
Dorothy Hamill 1976
The “Hamill Camel” and the “Hamill Haircut” were household words in the mid-1970s. Both were creations of Olympic figure skating champion Dorothy Hamill, who was applauded at competitions or exhibitions in nearly 20 nations by the age of 20. Between 1969 and 1975,...
Debbie Willcox 1977
She had taken up gymnastics just four years earlier, but the skills she had acquired served Debbie well in 1976. Obviously a quick learner, she already was a Top 10 finisher in the Elite Class of U.S. Gymnastics Federation competition and had competed with the...
Jayne Gibson 1978
The year 1977 meant much more to Jayne Gibson than the Broncos’ first trip to the Super Bowl. She was busy writing a little history of her own, leading her Arvada West Wildcat volleyball team to the Class AAA state high school championship. She also directed her Rocky...
Mary Decker 1979
Making a triumphant comeback after surgery for a painful calf muscle problem, versatile Mary logged a series of track, cross country and road racing victories which told the running world her career was far from over. The transplanted Californian, who set three indoor...
Lou Piel 1980
As a young farm girl in northeastern Colorado, Lou couldn’t hit the side of a barn, but it didn’t take her long to find the target. Practice paid off in 1979 as the University of Northern Colorado’s junior pitching ace lit up the scoreboard with 155 strikeouts, a 0.52...
Tanya Haave 1980
If “ultimate athlete” was defined in the dictionary, Tanya undoubtedly would be cited as an example. Performing almost to perfection, this Evergreen High School and University of Tennessee star excelled in two sports while maintaining a 4.0 GPA. In her final season of...
Evergreen High School Volleyball Team 1981
They shared a dream and they were the first “baker’s dozen” to share a coveted Sportswoman of the Year Award. How the Evergreen volleyball team and Coach Lo Hunter got from Point A to Point B was high sports drama in 1981. The Cougars started the season with 76...
Connie Carpenter Phinney 1982
At 14, Connie got her first taste of Olympic competition as a speed skater on the U.S. team for the 1972 Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan. She then switched gears and concentrated thereafter on competitive cycling, except for a brief stint on UC Berkeley’s rowing team...
Karen Beer 1983
Karen won more athletic and academic awards during her collegiate career than any other woman in University of Denver sports history. Named Female Athlete of the Year three times in a row, she also was DU's Outstanding Senior Woman in 1983 and graduated cum laude with...
Connie Carpenter Phinney 1984
At 14, Connie got her first taste of Olympic competition as a speed skater on the U.S. team for the 1972 Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan. She then switched gears and concentrated thereafter on competitive cycling, except for a brief stint on UC Berkeley’s rowing team...
Rhonda Blanford 1985
She missed the 100-meter hurdles finals by 1/100th of a second at the 1984 Olympic Trials. Disappointing? Yes. Discouraging? No, at least not for this University of Nebraska standard-bearer, who raced on to glory in 1985. Serving notice she was still in the chase for...
Yolanda Johnson 1986
In a panorama of exciting 1986 achievement, “Yo-Yo” wrote a storybook finish to her prep career, dominating her field of competition with every honor possible. Graduating “prep-perfect” from George Washington High School, she never lost a race in her entire prep...
Priscilla Welch 1987
What does an unemployed and bored ex-petty officer do after retiring from the British Royal Navy at age 36? She takes up marathon running of course. Priscilla was a one-kilometer neophyte when she made that 1980 decision. Less than three years later she won her first...
Kirsten Hanssen 1988
When the 1988 triathlon season began there was no doubt about Kirsten’s affinity for the winner’s circle. The 5-foot-3 “Wonder Woman” owned an incredible 16 titles, including the World Championship, and dominated all distances: international, long and sprint. She was...
CU Basketball Team 1989
Nobody can pinpoint an exact date, but by mid-1989, everybody knew the transformation was complete. The University of Colorado Women’s Basketball Team had catapulted from the bottom to the top and no longer was the opening act for the CU Men’s Basketball Team. The...
Jill Trenary 1990
Figure skating has been described as a “cold and lonely sport” but for the defending U.S. National Ladies Singles champion, 1990 was a warm and friendly year. In the best free skating performance of her illustrious career, Jill sealed a second straight U.S. title,...
April Heinrichs 1991
Her fame in soccer circles is worldwide and her competitive spirit is legendary, which explains why this Littleton-reared kicker is the first female athlete to be featured on a trading card. Few women have had a greater opportunity to make an impact on their sport...
Gigi Fernandez 1992
Draped in a U.S. flag at her post victory press conference in Barcelona, Aspen’s newest Olympic heroine savored her “greatest thrill to date.” As a junior tennis player in Puerto Rico, Gigi said, she never thought she’d be playing for any American team, “so it was an...
Jill McGill 1993
Jill McGill may be the only Colorado golfer to hold the title of “unofficial” state high school champion one year and the very next year be declared the “official” state high school champion. Although she played for Cherry Creek’s team in her junior year, golf was not...
Amy Van Dyken 1994
The fastest female swimmer in the history of the United States first gained recognition at Cherry Creek H.S. as a six-time All-America, Athlete of the Year and winner of State, Junior National and Olympic Festival championships. Unbelievably, she couldn’t even swim...
Amy Van Dyken 1996
The fastest female swimmer in the history of the United States first gained recognition at Cherry Creek H.S. as a six-time All-America, Athlete of the Year and winner of State, Junior National and Olympic Festival championships. Unbelievably, she couldn’t even swim...
Libbie Hickman 1997
If 1996 was something of a heartbreaker for Libbie—she finished in a non-qualifying fourth place at the Olympic Trials—then the year 1997 definitely was not a disappointment, in fact, heart booster describes it best! The Fort Collins runner got off to a fast start,...
Abby Waner 2005
When Abby Waner graduated from ThunderRidge High School in 2005, many media pundits and coaches asserted that she may be the most-talented all-around women's basketball player to come out of the state of Colorado ever. Abby certainly provided good reasons for that...
Melanie Troxel 2006
Colorado’s top female athletes and contributors to women’s athletics, selected by a panel of sportswriters and sportscasters from around the state, were honored by Sportswomen of Colorado at the 33rd annual awards banquet on March 11th, 2006. Th 2007 Sportswoman of...
Katie Uhlaender 2007
Nationally, worldwide, Katie Uhlaender is the absolute best skeleton racer there is. And, that makes her Colorado’s Sportswoman of the Year. Skeleton is that “gentle” winter sport where competitors fling themselves on a little sled and race down an icy track, head...
Erin Popovich 2008
Erin Popovich set 20 new swimming records at the 2008 Summer Paralympic games in Beijing last September. She won four gold medals and two silver medals, breaking two world records (200m individual medley and 100m breaststroke) and two Paralympic records (100m and 400m...
Mikaela Shiffrin 2013
Our Sportswoman of the Year is already making headlines in 2013. She was unanimously elected by the nominating committee based on her performance in 2013. She was just 17-years-old when she won the first of four World Cup races, the first woman to do so before the age...
April Heinrichs 2004
Her fame in soccer circles is worldwide and her competitive spirit is legendary, which explains why this Littleton-reared kicker is the first female athlete to be featured on a trading card. Few women have had a greater opportunity to make an impact on their sport...
Ann Battelle 1999
To say that her 1998 ski season was downright disastrous is understating Ann’s face-to-face confrontation with gut wrenching reality. Seemingly on course for a medal in Nagano, the 30-year-old freestyle skier from Steamboat Springs was leading going into the final...
Alison Dunlap 2001
Five days after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Sportswomen of Colorado’s 2001 Sportswoman of the Year showed that there are still good things in this world with a gritty, come from behind performance in the World Mountain Bike Championships at Vail. In fifth...
Ellen Miller 2002
Ellen Miller is in some ways a typical athlete, always wanting to do more, to see if she can accomplish the next challenge she takes on. She sets records all over the place; she competes in everything from running and mountain biking to snowshoeing and Nordic skiing....
Katelyn Kaltenbach 2003
Smoky Hill junior Katelyn Kaltenbach had a 2003 season that was breathtaking. Competition after competition, win after win, she staked her claim as the very best in her sport, not only in Colorado but also in the entire country. A great deal was expected of her and...
Jenny Barringer 2009
2009 Colorado Sportswoman of the Year Jenny Barringer had a year to remember, setting six NCAA records and seven CU records and was awarded several top honors in the process. In December, she won the inaugural USTFCCCA’s The Bowerman award, which recognizes annually...
Alana Nichols 2010
Alana Nichols is our 2010 Colorado Sportswoman of the Year! Alana was an accomplished softball player in high school when, in the winter of 2000, she broke her back in a snowboarding accident. It left her paralyzed from the waist down. That’s an incredibly challenging...
Missy Franklin 2012
Missy Franklin is our 2012 Colorado Sportswoman of the Year! She is a five-time medalist (three gold, one silver, one bronze) at the World Aquatics Championships and a two-time silver medalist at the World Short Course Championships. As part of the American team, she...