Country United States Currently held by Cassie Broadhead, BYU | First awarded 1986 | |
Awarded for the most outstanding basketball player in the West Coast Conference | ||
The West Coast Conference (WCC) Women's Basketball Player of the Year is a basketball award given to the most outstanding women's basketball player in the West Coast Conference. The award has been given ever since the conference first sponsored women's basketball in the 1985–86 season, when it was known as the West Coast Athletic Conference. There has been one tie in the history of the award, in 2006–07 between Stephanie Hawk of Gonzaga and Amanda Rego of Santa Clara (coincidentally, players from the same two schools were involved in a tie for the WCC Men's Player of the Year Award that season). There have also been a total of three repeat winners, but only one—Courtney Vandersloot of Gonzaga—has been Player of the Year three times.
No one WCC school has dominated the total awards distribution over time. The overall leader is Gonzaga, with seven awards; BYU, Saint Mary's and Santa Clara are next, each with five awards. However, since BYU joined the WCC in 2011, it has won five of the six awards presented. Each current WCC member except for Pacific has at least one award. Pacific had been a charter member of what is now the WCC, but left in 1971, long before the conference sponsored women's sports, and did not return until 2013. The only former WCC women's basketball member that failed to produce an award winner was Nevada, which only participated in the conference's first two women's basketball seasons (1985–86 and 1986–87).
Winners by school
Note: Years of entry for each school are the actual calendar years they joined the WCC and first played women's basketball in the conference. Because the basketball season spans two calendar years, the award years reflect the years in which each season ended.