Jamie Damm wins women’s rookie of the year after clutch catch
Jamie Damm turned a first season of quick growth into the University of Wisconsin-Platteville women’s rookie of the year award, a teammate-voted honor reserved for a first-year player who brings effort, throws and catches when the team needs them most. The freshman from Columbus, Wisconsin, who wears No. 4 and majors in Environmental Science, said her proudest moment came in women’s no-sting against UNL, when a catch pushed the match into overtime and gave her season its signature play.
That moment mattered because catching was not the part of her game she trusted most. Damm said she still wants to improve that skill in both women’s and coed play, which makes the overtime play stand out as more than a highlight. It showed the kind of adjustment a rookie has to make over the course of a long season: learn the speed, absorb the pressure and become reliable when the game tightens. By the end of the year, Damm had gone from a newcomer finding her footing to a player teammates could point to when the match turned tense.
UWP’s women’s coverage had already flagged that progression before the award was announced. In the NCDA women’s nationals preview, Damm was described as a freshman who had worked incredibly hard, improved her throws and brought intense pressure on the court, with a spot on the All-Rookie team in play. That profile fit what happened at the third annual women’s national dodgeball tournament in Akron, Ohio, where 58 players from nine schools and eight teams filled the bracket. UWP’s own nationals recap said the program finished in the final four again, with rookies and veterans showing the skills and dodgeball knowledge they had built across the season.
Damm’s own description of the year makes the learning curve plain. She said the team felt like family and that some teammates became her closest friends, a setting that helped her keep practicing and keep competing without letting one bad game linger. Her biggest lesson was simpler and harder: dodgeball is only one part of life, so the right response after a mistake is to reset, keep having fun and stay aggressive. That mindset, more than any single throw, is what made the rookie award fit her first season.