As the year draws to a close, we are once again looking back on the 2025 Seattle Sounders season and asking you to vote on your players and moments of the year.
The survey will be open through next week, after which we will tally up the results and announce the winners. Unlike the leagues and teams, we at Sounder at Heart break up the player of the year award into offensive and defensive roles.
Note that the survey includes questions on both the Sounders/Defiance and the Reign; if you follow only one of the teams you can skip any questions you don’t feel equipped to answer. Also note that the order of the questions and the answers are randomly shuffled.
Performance in all competitions should be considered.
Offensive Player of the Year
2024 winners – Albert Rusnák (54%) for Sounders and a Reign tie between Bethany Balcer and Ji So-Yun at 32.5%. Nicolás Lodeiro and Fredy Montero both won the SaH Offensive Player of the Year three times.
The cutoff point for the Sounders nominees in the 2025 voting was 11 combined goal contributions. Every position in the attacking band had at least one nominee. Unlike past seasons no fullbacks or DMs cracked the benchmark.
Defensive Player of the Year
2024 winners – Yeimar took 61.9% of the 2024 Sounders vote. Sofia Huerta earned 26.5% of the Reign vote. Yeimar and Ozzie Alonso both took the Sounders award four times.
Yeimar did not make the playing time cutoff in 2025. This may have been an error by the poll creator (me). Using the MLS starting keeper mark of 32 matches in all competitions, there are two DMs, two fullbacks, a centerback and keeper up for the award.
Breakout Player of the Year
2024 winners – Paul Rothrock earned 86.1% of the Sounders vote. Jordyn Bugg took 46.4% of the Reign vote.
The nature of this award is such that it is rare to have multiple breakout seasons, though Josh Atencio earned it twice. Breakout players are not always young players. Rothrock and Alex Roldan both took the award.
Young Player of the Year
2024 winners – Obed Vargas ran against others, but earned 97.8% of the 2024 votes for the Sounders. Jordyn Bugg edged out Jordyn Huitema and Emeri Adames with 31.6% of the Reign vote.
This award is for the best Olympic qualified age on the Sounder side, and may need to get even younger as the Sounders keep playing teenagers. For the Reign the old cutoff was U25. But that league is also moving younger. Obed, Atencio, Cristian Roldan and DeAndre Yedlin all took the Sounders award twice.
Moment of the Year
In 2024 we skipped this award. I'd love to hear what moments you remember in comments and Discord so we can update the tracking page. In 2023 the moment of the year was combined by RoValks and Sounders, with Megan Rapinoe's farewell match earning recognition.
Past moments have included trophy clinching goals and saves, a centerback scoring, Zakuani exchanging jerseys with Mullan and the fans greeting a trophy winning team at the airport.
The guidance when taking nominations from the SaH staff was "what moment from 2025 will you be talking about and remember many years from now?"
Voting will be open until midnight on New Year's Day.
This newsletter was made possible through the support of Full Pull Wines, a boutique wines reseller that has been sponsoring us since 2011.
