PORTLAND, Ore. – Putting together her best season yet on the track and equaling the performance with another stellar year in the classroom, Seattle Pacific’s Annika Esvelt was named the 2023-24 GNAC Female Scholar Athlete of the Year announced by the conference office on Thursday.
Esvelt became the sixth woman in SPU history to claim the major award, giving the Falcons the most winners among the conference’s 10 members since the GNAC was founded in 2001. The scholar athlete of the year award is voted on by the GNAC athletic directors and honors the male and female adjudged to have achieved the greatest combination of success on the field and in the classroom during a given year. Alaska Anchorage’s Coleman Nash was announced as the GNAC Male Scholar Athlete of the Year on Wednesday.
“Annika has had a tremendous career, and has had an enormous amount of improvement over the course of her years in college,” said SPU head cross country/track & field coach Karl Lerum. “This makes her ongoing success that much more impressive.”
Esvelt was named the GNAC Outdoor Female Athlete of the Year last month, after completing her junior campaign with a pair of first-team All-America finishes at the 2024 NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Emporia, Kan. Esvelt finished as the national runner-up in the 10,000 meters, clocking a time of 34:18.07. She followed with a seventh-place finish in the 5,000 meters, running a time of 16:54.06.
The two stellar performances capped an all-around phenomenal year for the Falcon distance star, who earned her third academic all-GNAC award while maintaining a 3.99 grade point average and studying applied human biology. “Annika is a great team leader on and off the track, and she leads by example,” said SPU distance coach Eric Hansen. “She isn't necessarily the most vocal leader, but she is always there for her teammates to talk to and make sure they feel heard. She never brings any drama to running or her academics. I know whether it's school or running, she is just going to get it done. That kind of reliability is incredibly valuable. She brings a calming presence to big meets where people's nerves can sometimes get the better of them.”
Esvelt’s 2023-24 season began with a third-place finish at the GNAC Cross Country Championships, where she ran a personal-best 6k time of 21:04.5 in Anchorage, Alaska on Oct. 21, 2023. It was the second all-conference cross country performance of Esvelt’s career, after finishing ninth at the conference meet in 2021. Esvelt went on to garner USTFCCCA all-region honors with a 20th-place finish at the NCAA West Region Cross Country Championships on Nov. 4, running a 6k time of 21:35.1 in Monmouth, Ore.
The Spokane, Wash., native’s campaign got stronger from there, as she turned heads during the indoor track season. Esvelt claimed the gold medal in the 3,000 meters at the GNAC Indoor Track & Field Championships on Feb. 19, clocking a time of 9:54.80. It marked her third indoor gold medal, after she won both the 3,000 meters and 5,000 meters at the 2022 GNAC Indoor Championships.
Esvelt wasn’t finished there, as she went on to garner honorable mention All-America in the 5,000 meters to complete her indoor season. She ran the seventh-fastest indoor 5,000 meters time in GNAC history at the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships on March 9 in Pittsburg, Kan., clocking in at 16:29.98 to finish in 10th place.
“It has been so much fun to see the growth she has had this year as an athlete and as a person,” said Hansen. “The two things that come to mind right away are her racing ability and her consistency. She is a much better racer than she was in the fall, and I don't think she had a bad race this entire outdoor season. Once you're running at an All-American level, being a smart racer is equally if not more important than being fit. Her confidence in herself is so much better than it was at the beginning of the year as well, both from a running standpoint and a personal standpoint. She is so much more in tune with her effort, and it has actually helped build my trust in her. I used to get nervous when she would make big moves in the middle of a race, but now I know if she's doing that it's because she knows she can hold it.”
Esvelt continued to rearrange the GNAC record books during the outdoor season, running the fourth-fastest 10,000 meters time in conference history at 33:41.59 at the Bryan Clay Invitational on April 12. Esvelt followed that PR performance with another lifetime best the next week, running a 1,500 meters time of 4:34.73 at the Ralph Vernacchia meet on April 27.
Hitting her stride at the GNAC Outdoor Track & Field Championships, Esvelt crushed the competition with a runaway victory in the 5,000 meters. Her gold-medal time of 17:06.73 was nearly a full minute faster than the runner-up time of 18:00.13. Esvelt also grabbed a bronze medal in the 1,500 meters at the GNAC Championships, clocking in at 4:41.77. “You can see in the way she carries herself – she just seems so much more comfortable in whatever setting she's in,” Hansen said. “I see her joking around and having fun at practice every day, much more than she was at the beginning of the year. It's great to see how much fun she's having with all of it and how genuinely happy she is.”
In total, Esvelt’s name appears four times among the GNAC top-10 lists, as she is ninth in the indoor 3,000 meters at 9:38.43 (2022) and sixth in the outdoor 5,000 meters at 16:14.31 (2022) to go along with this year’s pair of top-10 performances. Esvelt recently earned her second academic all-district award from the College Sports Communicators organization as well. “Annika’s commitment to excellence, both as a student and an athlete, is clear to anyone who spends time with her,” said Lerum. “This approach can’t help but rub off on the athletes and coaches who interact with her on a daily basis.”
Esvelt is the second Falcon cross country/track & field athlete to claim the honor, joining 2009-10 winner Jessica Pixler. Other GNAC Female Scholar Athletes of the Year from SPU include Sophia Chilczuk (women’s soccer, 2021-22), Shayla Page (women’s soccer, 2015-16), Suzanna Ohlsen (women’s basketball, 2014-15), and Kelsey Jenkins (women’s soccer, 2011-12).
“Annika is clearly among the best athletes ever to wear an SPU jersey,” Lerum said. “One thing that makes Annika unique among her historical athletic peers is her outward focus on her teammates and even her competitors. She is genuinely invested in other people’s success.”