Penny Baroni Named NEWMAC Athlete of the Year After 23-Goal Season as Babson Win Sixth Straight Title
Some players have a good season. Penny Baroni had the kind of season that bends a whole conference around her.
The Babson junior was named NEWMAC Athlete of the Year on Tuesday after leading the conference with 23 goals and 55 points, and finishing second in assists with nine. She is the fourth straight Babson player to take the award and the tenth in programme history, which tells you plenty about where the power sits in this league.
Baroni’s numbers drove Babson’s sixth consecutive NEWMAC championship. The Beavers beat Wellesley 3-0 and then MIT 2-1 in the final, and they carry that form straight into the NCAA Tournament, hosting Union (NY) in a first-round game on Wednesday evening.
MIT’s night, and the streak that ended
If Baroni was the story of the season, MIT were the story of the tournament. Senior back Audrey Oh was voted Defensive Athlete of the Year, the second in programme history and the first since Taylor Grey in 2019. The Engineers conceded 1.50 goals a game, third best in the conference, gave up just 10.6 shots a game, and Oh chipped in four goals herself, three of them game-winners.
MIT’s coaching staff took the Coaching Staff of the Year award too. Megan Caveny, in her first year as head coach, led the Engineers to a 13-7 record, an 8-1 conference mark and the top seed, and it is MIT’s first coaching award since 2019. The headline moment came on 6 October, when MIT beat Babson 1-0 and snapped the Beavers’ 80-game NEWMAC regular-season winning streak. MIT then hosted the championship final for the first time since 2011 after beating Smith 3-0 in the semi.
Smith had their own first. First-year midfielder Molly van Brunschot, who came over from Amsterdam, was named Rookie of the Year, the first in Bears history. She put up eight goals and four assists for 20 points, second on the team in all three categories, with two game-winners and a defensive save, and she helped Smith back to the NEWMAC semi-finals and their first postseason win since 2022.
MIT sophomore Meredith Wu picked up the Laurels of Academic Excellence award. She’s a chemical engineering major with a 4.00 GPA, and a pretty useful player too, with ten career goals and 11 assists.
The wider picture
The coaches picked 26 players across the two All-Conference teams, 13 on the First Team and 13 on the Second. Ten were repeat selections, 16 were first-timers. Oh and her MIT teammate Ingrid Tomovski were the only three-time All-NEWMAC picks in the group.
A few numbers that jumped out: WPI keeper Myles Lakin led the conference in save percentage at .822 and was second in saves per game at 7.35. Babson’s Grace Mullaney and Mount Holyoke’s Diane Lee shared the assists lead with 12 each, and Lee also led the league in game-winning goals with six as Mount Holyoke went 14-6, their most wins since 2017.
Three NEWMAC players earned national weekly honours this fall as well. Wheaton’s Hannah Fortin and Baroni took the NFHCA Division III Offensive Player of the Week awards in October, and Wellesley’s Hannah Simmonds took the defensive award on 4 November.
For our money, the interesting bit isn’t Baroni’s numbers, impressive as they are. It’s that MIT finally found a way to beat Babson, and did it with a first-year head coach. Babson still won the title, but the gap has closed. Wednesday night against Union is the next test of whether this Babson side can turn a conference crown into a proper NCAA run.
