A'ja Wilson wins AP Female Athlete of the Year following historic 4th WNBA MVP

A'ja Wilson stood atop the WNBA again in 2025, winning an unprecedented fourth MVP as her Las Vegas Aces earned a third championship in four seasons.

For that, she earned The Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year on Wednesday for the first time in her career. It's the second consecutive year a basketball player won the award after Caitlin Clark was honored in 2024.

“It’s an honor when you think about the group of women who have won before,” Wilson said in a phone interview. “Just to have my name be a part of it, I’m blessed.”

Wilson is only the fifth basketball player to be honored as the Female Athlete of the Year since it was first presented in 1931, joining Sheryl Swoopes (1993), Rebecca Lobo (1995), Candace Parker (2008, 2021) and Clark.

A group of 47 sports journalists from the AP and its members voted. Wilson received 17 votes, tennis star Aryna Sabalenka was second with nine and Paige Bueckers was third with five.

“The things she’s done on the court have never been done. To me, she’s in a category all her own,” Aces coach Becky Hammon said of Wilson. “People always ask who’s on your Mount Rushmore? I’m saying she’s on Everest — there’s nobody up there with her.”

Shohei Ohtani won the AP Male Athlete of the Year on Tuesday for the fourth time.

Hammon has been impressed with everything about Wilson in her four years coaching in Las Vegas.

“Her relatability, her being down to earth makes her a great superstar," Hammon said. "Her skill set is unmatched, but she’s also the easiest player to coach. To have that mixture of humility, grace and skill, there’s a reason why she’s doing things that have never been done."

This season was different for Wilson and the Aces, who had cruised to their previous two titles as a heavy favorite. This year, with a month to go, the Aces were sitting at .500 and were in danger of missing the playoffs after coming off a record 53-point loss against Minnesota.

Wilson rallied her team to wins in the final 16 regular-season games to secure the No. 2 seed, and Las Vegas went on to win the championship.

“This season I found myself through the adversity and mud we went through,” she said.

Despite her numbers being on par with her unanimous MVP season the year before, Wilson heard the chatter that she wasn't playing as well and that she wasn't the front-runner to repeat as the league's top player.

The 29-year-old used that as fuel on the court. She led the league with 23.4 points and 2.3 blocks per game.

“The way they talk about us, the way they talk about me, I'm ready for that, I'm ready for the noise,” Wilson said. “It's always going to be something. If we sit here and try to please everybody, we're going to go insane. I'm just going to continue to prove why I'm one of the greatest and why my team is part of a dynamic dynasty.”

Wilson raised her game even further in the playoffs, helping the Aces survive decisive winner-take-all games in the quarterfinals and semifinals. She then helped Las Vegas sweep Phoenix in the WNBA Finals, hitting the winning shot in Game 3.

“It’s fair to say the expectations for her are so sky high now, she’ll be compared to a degree to the unanimous MVP she was the year before,” ESPN analyst Rebecca Lobo said. “Even though she wasn’t unanimous MVP this year, the journey she had this season was different and she was playing the best basketball of her career in the playoffs.”

“Every year, you wonder how she’ll get better, and she always does.”

Wilson became the first player in either the WNBA or NBA to win the MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, Finals MVP and lead the league in scoring in the same season.

Wilson broke a tie with Swoopes, Lisa Leslie and Lauren Jackson, who all won the WNBA MVP three times. She plans to have another relaxing offseason as she won’t play overseas or in Unrivaled, the domestic 3-on-3 league.

Wilson became a free agent at the end of the season and could be in for a significant raise as the league and players union negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement, but she is widely expected to return to the Aces.

She’s already crossed one thing off her bucket list, meeting her idol Beyonce at the Formula 1 race in Las Vegas last month.

“It was super cool, Beyonce is someone that I’ve always wanted to meet because I just admired her work,” Wilson said.

The Aces great is that way herself for so many. She launched a shoe and clothing line with Nike. Her shoe sold out minutes after it went on sale.

“It's amazing, something that I think about every day when I look around and see people just wearing my shoe. Every day it's a gentle reminder that you know it's a special moment that we're living in and I'm so grateful when I look back on it.”

AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

FILE - Las Vegas Aces center A'ja Wilson reacts during the second half of Game 2 against the Seattle Storm in the first round of the WNBA basketball playoffs Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)

FILE - Las Vegas Aces center A'ja Wilson (22) runs onto the court before Game 5 of a WNBA basketball playoff semifinals series between the Las Vegas Aces and the Indiana Fever, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

FILE - Las Vegas Aces center A'ja Wilson (22) grabs a rebound over Indiana Fever guard Aerial Powers (23) during the second half of Game 2 of a WNBA basketball playoff semifinals series Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

FILE - Las Vegas Aces center A'ja Wilson (22) holds up numbers to commemorate her WNBA career 5,000 points after the Aces defeated the Connecticut Sun in a WNBA basketball game Wednesday, June 25, 2025, in Las Vegas. (Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun via AP, File)

FILE - Las Vegas Aces center A'ja Wilson, center right, holds up her MVP trophy after Game 4 of the WNBA basketball finals against the Phoenix Mercury, Friday, Oct. 10, 2025, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri, File)

SONOMA, Calif. (AP) — Shane van Gisbergen continued his remarkable run on the twistiest tracks in NASCAR, but this was no easy Sunday drive.

The Trackhouse Racing driver became the winningest active Cup Series driver on road and street courses with his second consecutive victory at Sonoma Raceway. Though he led 74 of the final 83 laps after starting sixth on the 1.99-mile road course north of San Francisco, van Gisbergen had to fend off a charge by runner-up Chase Briscoe with a No. 97 Chevrolet that hadn't been entirely to his liking since practice a day earlier.

“We were really bad yesterday, and these guys did an amazing job turning this car into a winner,” said van Gisbergen, who celebrated with a massive burnout for the grandstands. “(Briscoe) was coming. He was really, really good, and I ran out at the end. Yeah, a couple more laps, we would have had some problems.”

Finishing second to van Gisbergen at Sonoma for the second consecutive year, Briscoe came up 0.357 seconds short and was left lamenting a mistake in getting his No. 19 Toyota into Turn 1 with four laps remaining.

“Not very many people get that close to him at the end of one of these road course races,” Briscoe said. “Just frustrated with myself. I felt like I definitely had the better car. I didn’t do as good of a job as he did driving. I was having to push so hard, and that was where I would make up my ground. It was just such a razor’s edge, and I about crashed. If I don’t make that mistake, I’m probably ahead of him at the end.

“Just bummed that it was my fault we didn’t win with the best car. Against that guy, you've got to be absolutely perfect.”

Van Gisbergen notched the eighth victory of his career on the tracks that require left and right turns, breaking a tie with 2020 Cup champion Chase Elliott.

With his second win this season, van Gisbergen improved three spots to 14th in the points standings, moving back into a provisional spot in the Chase.

But there are no road or street courses remaining over the final 18 races of the season, so the New Zealand native will need to diversify his skillset after entering NASCAR three years ago with no experience on ovals.

“I need to really step it up on the ovals,” he said. “This is an oval championship, and I need to keep getting better at them.”

Pole-sitter Ty Gibbs finished third, and Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell rounded out the top five.

For the second year in a row, the top seed was knocked off in the opening race of the In-Season Challenge, the bracket-style tournament that pits 32 drivers head to head with the top finisher advancing.

Tyler Reddick finished four laps down in 36th because of a power steering problem. That turned his first-round matchup into a walkover for 10th-place finisher Alex Bowman, who nabbed the 32nd and final seed in the In-Season Challenge despite missing four races with vertigo.

“It’s just a very odd issue,” Reddick said. “Everything seemed fine when we left the pit stall, and then the steering just really got notchy with the power steering going in and out. It was just really really hard to make any kind of lap time with it.”

The 23XI Racing driver salvaged a point by setting the race’s fastest lap after the team made repairs. After leading the Chase standings since winning the Daytona 500 season opener, Reddick fell one point behind Denny Hamlin with eight races remaining in the regular season.

“I’d say we got pretty fortunate,” Reddick said. “All things considered, for the issues that we had, we were very fortunate to only lose nine points to Denny while finishing last.”

Second-seeded Hamlin advanced despite a 26th-place finish, avenging a first-round upset by Ty Dillon last year.

In a rematch, Dillon was ahead of Hamlin for most of Sunday’s race until he lost power steering with 15 laps remaining and fell to 35th. Hamlin rebounded from being spun from seventh by Carson Hocevar on a restart with 46 laps remaining.

“I had a really fast car, a top-five car on speed,” Hamlin said. “Once we got spun, it just lost all the downforce, and we struggled.”

Hocevar, who was also involved in a separate incident with Bell, apologized for the contact with Hamlin.

“I was watching my mirror the whole time, and I wasn’t even seeing that I was hitting Denny,” said Hocevar, who has tangled with several veterans this year. “I was happy to hear that I wasn’t the difference maker of Ty beating Denny because I would be looked at for sports fixing probably with the way I was singing Ty’s praises.”

NASCAR will return to Chicagoland Speedway for the first time in seven years with a 400-mile race on July 5. In the most recent Cup race on the 1.5-mile oval in Joliet, Illinois, Alex Bowman earned his first victory in NASCAR’s premier series by beating future teammate Kyle Larson on June 30, 2019.

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

Shane van Gisbergen celebrates after winning a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Sonoma Raceway, Sunday, June 28, 2026, in Sonoma, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Shane van Gisbergen celebrates after winning a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Sonoma Raceway, Sunday, June 28, 2026, in Sonoma, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Shane van Gisbergen celebrates after winning a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Sonoma Raceway, Sunday, June 28, 2026, in Sonoma, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

A tribute to Kyle Busch is displayed during a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Sonoma Raceway, Sunday, June 28, 2026, in Sonoma, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

The pit crew for Chase Elliott works on the car during a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Sonoma Raceway, Sunday, June 28, 2026, in Sonoma, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Shane van Gisbergen (97) drives during a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Sonoma Raceway, Sunday, June 28, 2026, in Sonoma, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)