The Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC) has announced its athletes of the year for the 2025 indoor and outdoor track and field seasons. Aurora University senior Deyanneira Colon Maldonado was named NACC Women's Indoor Track and Field Athlete of the Year. The awards are voted on by the league's head track and field coaches.
Colon Maldonado had a dominant indoor season for the Spartans, ranking first on the NACC's ranked performance list at every distance from 800 to 5,000 meters while also posting top-five times in the 4x400 relay (third) and the open 400 (fifth). A five-time NACC Women's Indoor Track Student-Athlete of the Week this season, she opened her year with a 16:47.72 clocking in the 5,000 at the Grand Valley State Holiday Open in early December. Colon Maldonado took the eraser to the NACC record book in late January, rewriting her own league all-time marks in the 1,500 and 3,000. She took second in the 1,500 at the Aurora Grand Prix with a time of 4:52.70, knocking nearly four seconds off her previous record (4:56.64), the followed it up with a NACC all-time best of 9:38.90 in the 3,000 at the Notre Dame Meyo Invitational. That mark erased the 9:43.34 she had posted at the 2024 DePaul Invitational. Colon Maldonado flipped the script to start February, posting a personal-best time of 60.63 in the 400 and a NACC season-best 2:19.99 in the 800 at the Illinois Wesleyan Keck Select Meet.
At the 2025 NACC Championships, Colon Maldonado won her second consecutive NACC Women's Track Athlete of the Meet honor after sweeping the four longest individual running events - the 800, the mile, the 3,000, and the 5,000.
She kicked off her championships with a meet-record performance in the 5,000-meter run. Colon Maldonado stopped the clock in 17:17.54, edging Concordia Wisconsin's Ainara Sainz de Rozas by just .45 seconds as the pair obliterated the previous record of 17:42.61 set by Aurora's Emily Paull in 2016. She opened the second day of competition with a win in the mile (5:17.75), then added the 800 title (2:19.99), before capping the day by edging Sainz de Rozas for the 3,000-meter crown in another championship-record performance. Colon Maldonado's winning 3K time of 9:54.92 broke her own championship record of 10:09.61 set just last year. Three of Colon Maldonado's victories came by less than a second, and the aggregate margin of victory for the four races was just 5.44 seconds.
Her performances throughout the year garnered her USTFCCCA All-Region honors in three events - the mile, the 3,000, and the 5,000. Ranked in the top-13 nationally in all three events, Colon Maldonado elected to compete in just the mile and 5K at the NCAA Championships - picking up all-America honors in both events. She opened the final day of the national meet with a sixth-place finish in the mile to capture first-team all-America honors. Colon Maldonado got out quickly, leading after each of the first three laps, but was unable to keep up with the late pace put forward by eventual winner Haley Schoenegge of Vassar. She took the bell in seventh place but clawed one spot back on the final lap to stop the clock in a NACC-record time of 4:52.06, erasing her own all-time mark set earlier in the season.
Colon Maldonado stepped to the line for the 3,000 roughly an hour following the completion of the mile and sat fifth after 1,800 meters. She slipped to 12th over the next five laps but picked up two spot with a late push to take 10th with a time of 9:43.98. The finish earned Colon Maldonado second-team all-America honors.
This is Colon Maldonado's fifth NACC Athlete of the Year award spanning cross country (2023, 2024), indoor track and field (2024, 2025), and outdoor track and field (2024).
