Washington and Lee Sweep the ODAC Awards as Lancione, Mzizi and Wills Take Top Honours
Washington and Lee’s title-winning season keeps paying off. The Generals swept the top offensive and coaching honours in the 2026 All-ODAC field hockey awards, announced on Tuesday.
Sophomore forward Madeline Lancione is the ODAC Offensive Player of the Year. She led the Generals with 29 points on 10 goals and nine assists, and she saved her best week for late October, when she racked up eight points in two road wins and was named ODAC Offensive Player of the Week on 26 October. She had two goals and four assists that week, including a career-high six points in a 6-3 win at Meredith.
Her head coach Gina Wills is the ODAC Coach of the Year for the fifth time, and the first since 2022. Wills has now led Washington and Lee to four of the program’s five ODAC titles. The five came in 2005, 2017, 2021, 2022 and 2026. This one meant plenty. The Generals beat top-seeded Lynchburg 2-0 in the final to win their first title since 2022, avenging a regular-season overtime loss to the Hornets, and they did it with a shutout from first-year goalkeeper Helenka Chodakiewicz.
Lynchburg take the other two major awards
Lynchburg didn’t go home empty-handed. Senior midfielder Khanyisile Mzizi is the Defensive Player of the Year, and freshman midfielder Sofia Boon is the Rookie of the Year. The Hornets had seven All-ODAC honorees in all, and Boon also earned the newcomer nod after a debut season that included two multi-goal games, one of them in a big regular-season win over Washington and Lee.
Shenandoah matched the league high with eight All-ODAC selections, and senior defender Camryn DeLeva took the ODAC/Virginia Farm Bureau Scholar-Athlete of the Year award. Three squads, Washington and Lee, Randolph-Macon and Shenandoah, accounted for 24 of the 39 all-conference honours between them.
A short NCAA stay
The awards landed on the same week Washington and Lee’s season ended. The Generals went into the NCAA Division III Tournament on Wednesday and lost 2-0 to York, the ODAC champions’ first NCAA trip since 2022 closing at 14-5. York scored through Linebaugh in the 46th minute and Landis from a penalty corner in the 55th, and Washington and Lee couldn’t find a way back.
That’s the cruel part of this week for W&L. They won the league, swept the big awards, and still went home early from the national tournament. But the ODAC honours tell the real story of their season. Lancione is only a sophomore. Wills has her fifth Coach of the Year award. And a side that won 10 of its last 11 games going into the NCAAs won’t be far away again next year.