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GoffRugbyReport.com — Harvard flyhalf/center and playmaker Tiahna Padilla has won the 2026 MA Sorensen Award as the nation’s top woman collegiate rugby player. [lead photo c/o Harvard Athletics]
Padilla already reached a milestone this season as she has been a finalist for the Sorensen Award an astonishing four-straight times, a testament to her consistently high performance.
A product of the Fallbrook HS program in Southern California, which also produced 2021 Sorensen Award winner Richelle Stephens, Padilla is the captain at Harvard and helped lead the Crimson to three straight NIRA DI titles in the fall of 2023, 2024, and 2025.
Her offensive capabilities are undeniable, but Padilla is also one of Harvard’s most consistent and most punishing tacklers.
“I feel like this is a team award as much as anything,” Padilla told Goff Rugby Report. “All I have wanted to do is do my best for the players around me.”
Moving from center, where she was a slicing runner and constant attacking threat, to flyhalf, where she was asked to open up space for others, was an adjustment for Padilla. And yet she remained in the upper-upper echelon of the game regardless.
“It as an adjustment, and I just had to trust that Mel [Denham] and the coaches knew what was best,” said Padilla. “I had to trust them, and learn to be a creator and set up my teammates.”
This she did at a high level.
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Padilla credits her coaching from the beginning in getting to this place. She looks up to Stephens, who was an Olympian as a teenager, and who returned to Fallbrook to coach Padilla in her senior year in high school.
“To learn the skills and the game in a low-stakes environment really helped me,” she said. “I was surrounded by coaches and players of a high caliber, just like at Harvard, so I am really grateful.”
Padilla will officially receive her MA Sorensen Award on June 13 at a gala event at the Washington Athletic Club in Seattle, Wash.
She was chosen from a list of hugely deserving finalists by a selection committee of coaches and media professionals.
The full list of finalists is here:
Tiahna Padilla, Harvard
Freda Tafuna, Lindenwood
Yesenia Morales, West Point
Telesi Uhatafe, Southern Nazarene
Historical MA Sorensen Award Winners
(International caps and appearance information in parentheses)
2016: Hope Rogers, Penn State (15s, RWC)
2017: Ilona Maher, Quinnipiac (15s, 7s, RWC, Olympics)
2018: McKenzie Hawkins, Lindenwood (15s, RWC)
2019: Emily Henrich, Dartmouth (15s, RWC)
2020: Alexandria Sedrick, Life University (7s, Olympics)
2021: Richelle Stephens, Lindenwood (7s, Olympics)
2022: Idia Ihensekhien, Dartmouth
2023: Keia Mae Sagapolu, Central Washington (15s, RWC)
2024: Freda Tafuna, Lindenwood (15s, RWC)
2025: Freda Tafuna, Lindenwood (15s, RWC)
2026: Tiahna Padillia, Harvard