KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Putting the final exclamation point on an unforgettable career at Christopher Newport, fifth-year senior Riley Cook has been named the 2021 United Soccer Coaches Division III National Player of the Year. The nearly unstoppable force atop the Captains' attack for four seasons saw her unprecedented career end with another banner year after leading CNU Women's Soccer to its first national championship.
 
Becoming the first Captain to earn National Player of the Year honors in any sport since Richard Roethel collected the Indoor Field Athlete of the Year honor in 2012, Cook punctuated her illustrious tenure with yet another record-shattering performance in 2021. She joins Roethel and Chelsie Schweers (Women's Basketball) as the only CNU athletes to earn National Player of the Year recognition in over 20 years. Additionally, Kenny Moreland (Baseball) was named National Pitcher of the Year in 2008 and Cook's former teammate, Gabby Gillis, earned National Midfielder of the Year in 2018.
 
With the honor, the Mechanicsville, Va. native adds to an impressive haul of postseason accolades that includes First Team All-America, First Team All-Region, First Team All-Conference, and Coast-To-Coast Athletic Conference Offensive Player of the Year plaudits. She was named the NCAA Tournament's Most Outstanding Offensive Player after an incredible run through the postseason and she carried the Captains' offense throughout the year. The veteran also earned the United Soccer Coaches National Player of the Week distinction once this season and added four more Conference Player of the Week certificates to her ledger, running her career total to 14.
 
For the third time in her career, Cook eclipsed 50 points in a season after logging 24 goals and 5 assists in her final run for a 53-point campaign. A top-five mark in the nation, Cook only added to her unfathomable career scoring record in 2021 after setting the mark as a junior in 2019. In her tenure, the all-time leader scored a ludicrous 198 points on 90 career goals and 18 assists.
 
This season, Cook was held scoreless only six times in the 23-game season, in which she started every game and averaged over 70 minutes played per game. She recorded two hat tricks, giving her seven in her career, and also logged a pair of the longest goal-scoring streaks in program history. During the regular season, Cook scored in eight straight games and concluded the year with an unconscionable six-game scoring streak against the toughest competition of the year, putting away a goal in every single NCAA Tournament contest.
 
Cook arguably pieced together the greatest offensive performance in Division III NCAA tournament history as she is the only player since its inception in 1986 to score a goal in all six games of the postseason event. Across all three levels of NCAA play, she joins North Carolina and US National Team legend Heather O'Reilly (UNC 2003) and Olympic gold medalist and Canadian soccer legend Christine Sinclair (Portland 2002) as the only players in NCAA history to score a goal in all six NCAA Tournament games.
 
More remarkably, she notched the game-winning goal in five of those six games, becoming the first soccer player in the history of NCAA Championship Soccer at any level, men's or women's, to accomplish that feat. No player since the NCAA Tournament started in 1959 has ever scored the winning goal for their squad in five or more contests until the 2021 NCAA Division III Women's Soccer Championship when Riley Cook put away five straight winners. For good measure, she added an assist on the game-winning goal against TCNJ in the championship game, factoring into all six winners.
 
Consolidating the record-breaking statistical achievements of Riley Cook's career is a monumental task as she set and re-set nearly every standard in the book by every measure. She is the all-time leader in goals and points scored in a game, single season, and career at Christopher Newport. Three of her four seasons rank as the top-three individual campaigns in program lore and the fourth, her freshman year, ranked as a top-ten season before her own records knocked it out.
 
Cook is the first three-time First Team All-American in CNU Athletics history and completes her tenure as the NCAA active leader in points scored, passing Grand Valley State and Michigan State's fifth-year star Ava Cook by two points in the final game. Her 90 career goals are the most by an active player by a margin of seven, and shatters the conference scoring record by 27 career tallies. She wraps her distinguished career with 11 NCAA Tournament goals and one assist for 23 career points in the postseason.
 
While Cook has patrolled the attack for the Captains, the nationally-ranked Captains have registered an overall record of 78-6-5 for a winning percentage of 90.4%. CNU won three conference titles and reached the NCAA Tournament in all four seasons of Cook's career, finishing in the second round twice, the national semifinals once, and culminating in this year's national championship.