File photo WVU’s Honor Huff is shown during a game against BYU from this past season.

MORGANTOWN — On Thursday morning the West Virginia women’s basketball team held an open practice session with the media in attendance, which in its own way represented an early summer’s New Year’s Day of its own for it symbolizes the beginning of the new school year’s athletic season.

The 2025-26 school year had become a page for the history books with baseball’s successful run to its first College World Series appearance in Omaha, which resulted in a Final Four finish, a year filling with echoes of “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, the reappearance of Rich Rodriguez on the football sideline as head coach, a year in which the rifle team had pulled off a thrilling comeback to take down another NCAA championship and a year willed with Honor Huff 3’s and a Crown championship for the trophy room.

If Rodriguez didn’t bring back the glory days, he did bring back Pat White on his coaching staff and Steve Slaton entered the College Football Hall of Fame. The women’s basketball program created an energy that wasn’t there before, setting the stage for baseball’s thrill-packed run.

As one year ran into another with college athletics now morphed into a professional-style adventure and with another new set of eligibility rules in place to run them, we thought we should offer up our own New Year’s Celebration, one with a different twist.

In the final analysis, the games in the sports played are great, yes, but it is the athletes who make them so and it is time to celebrate them, but not just for their performance but, instead, to celebrate the athletes who during the 2025-26 year were the most influential, not only in winning games or championships but as citizens, sort of celebrating those who perhaps are best symbolized what we all would like our sons and daughters to become as they went through their college age period.

In a year where football and men’s basketball, the bellwethers of any modern Power 4 athletic department, were without players of superstar status or all-conference or All-American recognition, these select athletes have left their mark on Mountaineer fans forever.

We know you have your own favorites and your own standards by which to judge them, but these are ours and we’d love to have you contact us with the personal list you compile.

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Honor Huff, men’s basketball

An undersized basketball player with a made-for-TV smile, a heart the size of Texas and a 3-point shot unlike any we’ve had at WVU, he came to symbolize new coach Ross Hodge’s Mountaineers.

An honorable mention All-Big 12 performer while averaging 16.5 points a game, he set the school single season 3-point record for a single season with 120 of them and laid end to end they probably stretched from Morgantown to Charleston. His 412 career 3’s were the 25th most made by a player in NCAA History.

With the Crown title on the line, he scored 38 points against Oklahoma in the final game, the most by any WVU player since 2009.

He was as right on with his quotes as he was with his 3-point shots, as he showed this comment after the final game: “If you want to grow not only as a basketball player, but as a person, this is the right place to be. This coaching staff and the way they teach, not about putting the ball in the basket. We can all grow in that facet, but growing your mind beyond basketball and using basketball to enhance your growth. Coach Hodge, he’s a wonderful person, not just coach.”

Jordan Harrison, women’s basketball

She came from Stephen F. Austin three years back with Coach Mark Kellogg and was the ultimate warrior for the Mountaineers. Undersized at 5-6, maybe, she spent her first couple of years with WVU running the show while JJ Quinerly was the star of the show, then stepped front and center as point guard this past season and led the Mountaineers to the Big 12 title.

The fans picked up on her endless energy, determination and defense as she became the defensive player of the year in the Big 12 while overcoming a big and slow offensive start when she tried to pick up too much of the burden left when Quinerly graduated.

But, she showed up every time was startlingly consistent, averaging 13.5, 13.7 and 13.1 points a game while starting 100 games and playing 3,138 minutes of non-stop ball.

The crowning moment came when she scored 21 points, including 10 for 10 from the free-throw line in a pressure packed Big 12 championship final in which she was the MVP.

“I just want to thank Coach Kellogg for believing in me,” Harrison said as it ended. “It’s definitely been a great journey, and I’m happy to have done it with my teammates.”

“I’ve said it many times, coaches do have favorites. She is one of mine. And I don’t hesitate to say that,” noted Kellogg. “She’s a phenomenal kid, great character, raised the right way, works her ass off, has talent, defends, does everything that you would want.”

Armani Guzman, baseball

Some guys just have it when you need it and Armani Guzman has proven himself to be one of those guys over the past two seasons as he rose up to become a postseason star.

A year ago, he had barely played when West Virginia went into postseason play, having been used mostly as a pinch runner to take advantage of his elite speed over the last month of the season, but coach Steve Sabins knew this was a ballplayer, not a track star.

And so, taking the untested Guzman at his word that he could play third base, even though he never had, Sabins put him in the lineup there for post-season play and before you could say “Brooks Robinson,” he’d been the MVP of the Clemson regional, carrying WVU into the Super Regional.

He finished that postseason with 10 hits in 21 at-bats in the NCAA Tournament.

Sabins knew he had a talent on his hands coming into this season and saw him as his centerfielder but there were adjustments to be made. Guzman got off to a slow start and he was being moved around from position to position until Sabins tried first base and he proved to be a natural there.

And so he was used mostly at first while his bat heated up along with his legs. On March 6, he was hitting .190 but came on to hit .349 for the rest of the season while shattering the team record for stolen bases with 42.

And, in the postseason, he again was dazzling again as he hit .458, hitting safely in all 11 games as WVU made the Final Four, nine of those 11 being multi-hit games as he stole at least one base in eight of the games and in all had 12 steals.

Nicco Marchiol, football

OK, he didn’t have a good year, was injured and transferred to Northwestern, so what’s he doing here?

Well, you may not have wanted him as your quarterback, although that remains to be seen but, as noted, you would certainly have wanted to have him as your son. In a lot of ways, he was the perfect Neal Brown quarterback, able to do everything but win football games and you couldn’t point a finger at him as the reason.

What he did was be the perfect team player – the model citizen, charitable, personable and willing to do whatever was asked of him. In his year with Rodriguez, he was the wrong guy for the job on a team that had a lot of wrong guys for the job.

But he didn’t complain. He played hard, got banged around when he didn’t have any blocking and didn’t have a running attack to rely on. Sometimes I’m sure on some of those visits to Children’s Hospital he felt like maybe he shouldn’t check in, he was so banged up, but he never missed a visit there or any other stop they asked him to asked him to make.

A lot of guys leave and you think “I’m glad he’s gone.” With Marchiol you thought, “I’m glad I got to know him when he was here.”

Marcus Caldeira, Men’s soccer

We could run Caldeira’s soccer accomplishments in front of you for a day and a half and then, when we finished, we could say to you, “now from two years ago.”

Sun Belt Player of the Year; Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Year; career-high 14 goals to lead the Sun Belt; 35 points scored and etc., etc., etc.

But there is so much more to this star from Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, that makes him what he is that it would fill a full-sized magazine piece, and already has.

Academics? He was named the NCAA Division I Men’s Soccer Academic All-America Team Member of the Year, as selected by College Sports Communicators for the second consecutive season. Add that being a three-time Academic American.

The finance major had a 4.0 GPA, which bodes well for his life after soccer but it appears he may be off and running on a long professional soccer career first.

Gavin Kelly, baseball

Gavin Kelly could have “big leagued” it as West Virginia’s baseball season came to an end with a loss to North Carolina in the College World Series in Omaha.

Everyone would have understood in this “me-first” era in which we live. He was after all an All-American and he had just completed one of the greatest seasons in WVU history, ending it with a 426-foot home run off his bat, his 19th of the year to tie the school record.

His average was .380 and people were already talking about him possibly being the No. 1 pick in next year’s major league baseball draft when he is eligible.

But when asked to say something, he didn’t have an ‘I’ or “me” speech prepared.

“I just want to say thank you to all the seniors, the staff and to all the people behind the scenes helping WVU baseball,” Kelly said. “It’s been a tremendous season and I’m just really thankful to be a part of it and to share it with my best friends.”

That was how he was all season, modestly handling the hype that came with the success he had earned. He well might have been the best player in college baseball this season, seeing as people weren’t sure if he was a second baseman who caught or a catcher who played second base, having gone between both and done it as well as it could be done.

He’ll have plenty of time to do his talking into major league microphones some day.

Joy Naukot, Track

While the nation’s spotlight was cast firmly upon WVU’s baseball run in the NCAA Tournament in Omaha, Joy Naukot was making history of her own even further west as she joined Mercy Kinyanjui in earning first-team All-American honors in track and field as she finished fifth in the grueling 10,000-meter final at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.

It was a historic moment as she became just the fifth Mountaineer in program history to earn All-American honors in cross-country, indoor track and outdoor track during the same academic year, joining a Hall of Fame quality roll call of runners Keri Bland, Clara Santucci, Marie-Louise Asselin and Ceili McCabe as the only women in program history to accomplish the feat.

That set the table for Kinyanjui to earn All-American status with a fifth-place finish in the 3,000-meter steeplechase the next night.

Naukot, from Kenya, earned All-American honors in 2024 while being named the Big 12 Women’s Newcomer of the Year and also a member of the Academic All-Big 12 Rookie Team.

“We have been competing since football season and are still performing while baseball is making its incredible run in Omaha,” WVU coach Sean Cleary said. “That is a testament to the commitment these three student-athletes have made to their sport.”

Griffin Lake, Rifle

The success of West Virginia’s rifle team is legendary in the sport with 21 national championships and Griffin Lake was crucial in the latest and, perhaps, most exciting, championship win as the Mountaineers came back from a first-day deficit for the second year in a row to win with him becoming the top scorer in the tournament.

Down three points and in fourth place, the Mountaineer senior went out and shot a 599 in air rifle, one short of perfection, in the first relay to get them going and wound up with 2395 points to beat TCU by eight.

“I was a little frustrated with my performance in air gun today, but the team results were really good today. We tied a national record, so …,” the from senior Emmaus, Pennsylvania, said after the title was secured. “The main reason I came to West Virginia was the atmosphere there. It felt like a family. And, obviously, they are the best team in the country, which is just a bonus.”

Lake finished the tournament with an 1194 score to take Most Outstanding Performer honors, the fifth Mountaineer to be so honored.

Lake, who returns for his senior year, has carried his success and WVU’s reputation into national shooting events while earning four medals in the USA Shooting Rifle National Championship where he won the junior final and finished second in the open final in air rifle to go with taking both the open and junior crowns earlier in the week.