STANFORD, Calif. – Three-time NCAA champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist Maggie Steffens is one of 10 exceptional former student-athletes that has been selected as a 2018 Today's Top 10 Award winner and will be honored at the 2018 NCAA Convention.
The award recognizes former student-athletes for their successes on the field, in the classroom and in the community. Recipients completed their athletics eligibility during the 2016-17 academic year and will be recognized at the Honors Celebration during the Convention, which will be held Jan. 17-20 in Indianapolis, Ind.
The NCAA Honors Committee, which selects the honorees, is comprised of representatives from member schools and conferences, as well as nationally distinguished former college athletes.
It was a banner senior year for Steffens in 2017. In addition to being named ACWPC and MPSF Player of the Year, she also was named a Pac-12 Tom Hansen Conference Medal winner, awarded an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship and became the first Stanford women's water polo player to receive academic All-America recognition from CoSIDA.
She earned her bachelor's from Stanford in science, technology and society with a concentration in innovations and organizations in June and was on campus this quarter to pursue her master's in management science and engineering.
Steffens has twice been recognized as the world's best, winning FINA Women's Water Polo Athlete of the Year honors in 2012 and 2014 in addition to being named Olympic MVP in 2012 and 2016 after gold-medal winning performances with the United States. More recently, she played alongside seven other Cardinal and won her second FINA World Championship in Budapest, Hungary in late July.
Steffens collected her second ACWPC Player of the Year award this season after leading Stanford to its sixth NCAA championship in Indianapolis in mid-May. In the final against UCLA, she forced a Bruin turnover with 14 seconds left and scored the game winner with nine seconds remaining to power the Cardinal to its crown.
Also a two-time MPSF Player of the Year and two-time NCAA Tournament MVP, Steffens led Stanford with a career-high 65 goals this season, tied for the fifth-most in Stanford single-season history, and was third in the MPSF in goals per game (2.50).
Steffens, who is Stanford's only four-time, first-team All-American, finished her career third in program history and 20th in MPSF history in goals scored (229). In four seasons on The Farm, Steffens and the Cardinal went 102-9 overall, 23-1 in conference play and won three national championships.
Throughout her undergraduate career, Steffens volunteered for Project 2020, a nonprofit focused on bringing water safety and sport opportunities to underprivileged kids, in addition to volunteering at local elementary schools and serving as a guest speaker for multiple summits and panels about women's sports.