CLAREMONT, Calif. - Ella Brissett of the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women's tennis team was the Division III women's recipient of the NCAA Impact award and will be honored at the NCAA Convention in January, the organization announced today. 

The Impact Award (formerly called the NCAA Today's Top Ten Award), celebrates the best of college athletics by honoring one exceptional male and one exceptional female senior student-athlete from each division. These honorees exemplify the highest standards of athletic excellence, academic achievement and service to their campuses and communities. The NCAA Impact Award represents the pinnacle of student-athlete recognition.

During her time at CMS, Brissett founded the Women's Empowerment in Sports Club (WEIS), which aims to build bridges between female student-athletes both on her campus and the broader community. Brissett and other WEIS members organized alumni panels and National Girls and Women in Sports Day activities aimed at empowering young girls.

Brissett also served a college peer mentor for Women in STEM, a CMS Title IX Peer leader leading workshops on sexual violence prevention, a Diversity Equity and Inclusion Intern with the Keck Science Department, and a Student-Athlete Advisory Committee Representative.

Off campus, Brissett has volunteered with the House of Ruth, as a youth engagement volunteer at elementary schools, and as a triage assistant at a free women's health clinic.

During her tennis career, Brissett won two national championships with the Athenas, proving the title-clinching point in the NCAA Championship match against the University of Chicago in 2022. She also had a pivotal win in the repeat title in 2023, coming back from a third-set deficit to provide the clinching point in a 5-4 regional final win over Pomona-Pitzer (after also coming back for a win in doubles to cut the Pomona-Pitzer lead to 2-1). 

Brissett graduated from Claremont McKenna with a 3.96 GPA in biology, earned first-team Academic All-America honors, and already has five peer-reviewed publications in print.

In addition to the NCAA Impact Award, Brissett was one of the 30 finalists for the NCAA Woman of the Year Award. She has also been honored as the Division III Commissioner's Association Women's Sport Student-Athlete of the Year, captured the Intercollegiate Tennis Association's Ann Lebedeff Leadership Award (which is given to only one student-athlete, male or female, from a pool of all three NCAA divisions), earned the SCIAC Character Award, and won the Claremont McKenna Hank Kreiger Award for character and leadership.

The 2026 NCAA Honors recipients will be celebrated at the NCAA Convention in January in the Washington, D.C., area. To view the complete list of winners featured below, go to the following link:

NCAA Awards