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SAN FRANCISCO -- The Olympic Club of San Francisco announced on Saturday, June 4, that UCLA's goalkeeper Garrett Danner was named the winner of the 2015 Cutino Award. The award is given to the outstanding female and male collegiate water polo players in the United States as voted by the coaches of the Division I schools. The winners were announced at the 17th Annual Cutino Awards Dinner.
Danner became just the second Bruin to win the award and the third overall winner as UCLA's Sean Kern won the first two awards in 1998 and 1999.
The 2016 female winner was Stephania Haralabidis of USC, who beat out teammate Brigitta Games and the third finalist, UCLA's Mackenzie Barr.
Danner was chosen the winner over the other two finalists, Bret Bonanni of Stanford, and Alex Obert from Pacific.
The award is given annually in honor of the late Peter J. Cutino, the former University of California Berkeley and The Olympic Club coach, who passed away in September 2004. Mr. Cutino is in the U.S. Water Polo Hall of Fame. He won “Water Polo Coach of the Year” 17 times. He led U.C. Berkeley to eight NCAA National Championships. In his career Mr. Cutino also coached in the Pan American Games, the Water Polo World Championships and the World University Games.
In 2015 as UCLA went 30-0 and repeated as NCAA Champions, Danner was selected as a First Team All-American and was named the Division I Player of the Year, the fourth UCLA player to ever earn that honor and the first since 2004. He was named First Team All-NCAA Tournament in 2015 after recording a total of 32 saves in the NCAA Tournament. He also earned MPSF All-Academic accolades for 2015 and was the lone goalie named First Team All-MPSF while being selected the MPSF Player of the Year and MPSF/KAP7 Tournament MVP.
He finished the season with 278 saves, placing him atop UCLA's single-season saves charts, and his career total of 773 saves not only placed him at 9th all-time in the MPSF but also prompted a huge jump in the UCLA record books, moving him from fifth in career saves to first all-time. He led the MPSF for the third straight year in goals-against average (6.05) and was first in saves per game (13.15). He was the only player in the MPSF to pick up two MPSF/KAP7 Player of the Week honors in 2015.