Softball | 8/6/2025 1:22:00 PM

Granville, Ohio - Denison's Annabelle Calderon (Perris, Calif./ Orange Vista), a May graduate and member of the Big Red softball team, has been selected as the 2025 recipient of the North Coast Athletic Conference's Pam Smith Award.

The award recognizes a senior female student-athletes who has distinguished herself throughout her collegiate career in the areas of academic achievement, athletics excellence, service and leadership. As the NCAC winner, Calderon will be nominated for the NCAA Woman of the Year award, one of the most prestigious honors the NCAA bestows. The award recognizes senior student-athletes who have distinguished themselves throughout their collegiate careers in the areas of academic achievement, athletics excellence, service, and leadership.

The Woman of the Year Selection Committee will name the Top 30 honorees, which include 10 women from each division. From the 30 honorees, the committee will then select and announce nine finalists, three from each NCAA division. The NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics will review the finalists and name the 2025 NCAA Woman of the Year. Later this fall, the national Top 30 honorees and nine finalists will be announced. The 2025 NCAA Woman of the Year will be announced at the 2026 NCAA Convention in Washington D.C.

This marks the fourth time a Denison woman has earned the Pam Smith Award as Megan Wong did so in 2021, Katie Navarre garnered the honor in 2011, and Erin Gorsich earned the distinction in 2008. Navarre is the only Big Red student-athlete to be named an NCAA Top 30 Woman of the Year honoree.

While at Denison Calderon earned four varsity letters in softball and graduated magna cum laude with a 3.79 grade point avaerage while majoring in biology.

She was inducted into the Chi Alpha Sigma national scholar-athlete honor society and was a 2025 Denison Presidential Medal Recipient, which is presented annually to candidates who embody a combination of service to the community, contributions to the arts, enlargement of the community's global perspective, athletic fitness and achievement, leadership ability and contribution to community discourse. 

Calderon wrapped her career with the Big Red and became Denison's record holder for batting average, doubles, slugging percentage, home runs, and total bases. As the starting catcher for the Big Red, she finished her senior season with 161 putouts, 15 assists, and a fielding percentage of 0.983. She is a two-time NFCA Catcher of the Year recipient, two-time NFCA First Team All-America honoree and a two-time NCAC Player of the Year. Academically she is a three-time Easton/NFCA All-American Scholar-Athlete and is one of two softball players to be named a College Sports Communicator Academic All-America®.

Off the field Calderon has impacted Denison's campus and greater community in a variety of ways. She was the acting president of Denison's Student-Athlete Advisory Council, has also served as the student-athlete representative on the Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics for two years, and recently was named a 2025 All-American Athlete Strength and Conditioning Athlete of the Year Award recipient, for her athletic accomplishments and dedication to strength and conditioning.

After her time at Denison, Calderon will attend Kansas University for grad school in exercise physiology and biochemistry, where she will be doing research in the Jayhawk Performance Lab.

Calderon was one of four outstanding nominees considered by the selection committee. The other candidates included: 
Ollie Bream, Women's Swimming & Diving, Wooster
Sydney Geboy, Women's Swimming & Diving, Kenyon
Sophia Porter, Women's Cross Country and Track & Field, DePauw

The NCAC Woman of the Year Award commemorates former Wittenberg women's basketball Head Coach and Associate Director of Athletics Pam Evans Smith, who had a profound impact upon the athletes she coached and the students she taught over an illustrious career that spanned more than two decades. She was the architect of the women's basketball program with the most wins and highest winning percentage in NCAC history through 2007. A 1999 Wittenberg Athletics Hall of Honor inductee, Smith earned seven NCAC Coach of the Year awards and compiled a 401-170 record after taking the reins of a struggling program prior to the 1986-87 season. She led the Tigers to eight NCAA Division III tournament appearances, twelve 20-win seasons, and 11 NCAC regular-season championships. 

Calderon and Geboy will also represent the NCAC as the conference's nominees for the Division
III Commissioners Association Female Sport Student Athlete of the Year.
 
NCAC Pam Smith Award Winners
2025 - Annabelle Calderon, Denison
2024 - Annalise Grammel, DePauw
2023 - Veronica Hardman, Ohio Wesleyan
2022 - Emmie Mirus, Kenyon
2021 - Megan Wong, Denison
2020 - Sydney Kopp, DePauw
2019 - Hannah Orbach-Mandel, Kenyon
2018 - Julia Wilson, Kenyon
2017 - Ellie Crawford, Kenyon
2016 - Haley Townsend, Kenyon
2015 - Maggie MacPhail, DePauw
2014 - Paige Gooch, DePauw
2013 - Leah Sack, Kenyon
2012 - Alisa Vereshchagin, Kenyon
2011 - Katie Navarre, Denison
2010 - Sarah Shinn, Ohio Wesleyan
2009 - Tracy Menzel, Kenyon
2008 - Erin Gorsich, Denison