KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Penn State women’s soccer graduate forward Kaitlyn MacBean was named to the 2025 MAC Hermann Trophy Watch List on Thursday afternoon, accentuating her status as one of the premier players to watch in the women’s college game following a release from United Soccer Coaches and the Missouri Athletic Club.

The Excelsior, Minnesota, native MacBean joins a long line of Nittany Lions to garner preseason recognition to the MAC Hermann Trophy Watch List and becomes the first Penn Stater since current NWSL professionals in Chicago Stars FC forward Ally Schlegel and Bay FC forward Penelope Hocking each earned spots ahead of the 2022 campaign. Penn State enters the 2025 campaign in the hunt for its first MAC Hermann Trophy semifinalist since Schlegel in 2022, as well as the program’s first winner of the award since National Championship-winning goal scorer Raquel Rodriguez took home the sport’s highest honor in 2015. Penn State boasts a pair of MAC Hermann Trophy winners in the program’s 31 prior seasons, with Rodriguez joining 2001 National Player of the Year Christie Welsh.

MacBean’s 2024 season in the Blue & White was by far her most statistically significant since joining the Penn State program as a true freshman in 2020. Her single-season career-best 34-point outburst a year ago marked the highest scoring individual season by a Nittany Lion since Maya Hayes turned in an astounding 70-point campaign in 2013. MacBean also managed to muster the third-longest goal scoring streak in Penn State history in a span from the 2023 and 2024 seasons. The veteran attacking player started all 25 fixtures for PSU in their run to the NCAA Tournament National Quarterfinals last season, helping anchor the Nittany Lions with the third-most points in the B1G and 15th-most nationally.

Over her storied career in Happy Valley, MacBean has picked up a wide array of individual accolades celebrating her tremendous achievements in Central Pennsylvania. Last year, she became the 22nd woman in Penn State program history to be named a United Soccer Coaches All-American, earning the program’s first Fourth Team honor in the process. She also extended PSU’s streak of 31 consecutive seasons with at least one First Team All-Big Ten Conference selection, becoming the program’s 82nd First Team honoree all-time. MacBean is a two-time All-Big Ten award winner, picking up third team laurels in 2023, and has also been named a Big Ten All-Freshman Team selection dating to her first full year of competition in 2022. Already in 2025, MacBean has been named to the TopDrawerSoccer Preseason Best XI Second Team, secured the No. 18 preseason player ranking in TopDrawerSoccer’s Preseason Top 100, and was named a United Soccer Coaches Forward to Watch earlier this week.

The Hermann Trophy is presented annually by the Missouri Athletic Club and is the nation’s highest individual honor recognizing the National Player of the Year as determined by voting of Division I head coaches who are members of United Soccer Coaches. It is named in honor of the late Robert Hermann, the legendary St. Louis-native businessman and soccer executive who founded the National Professional Soccer League, the first pro soccer league in the United States which became the North American Soccer League. He was inducted in the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame in 2012.

Last season, the Nittany Lions advanced to the National Quarterfinals for the second year in a row, extended the nation’s longest streak of consecutive Sweet 16 appearances to eight-straight, secured the program’s 30th consecutive NCAA Tournament bid and booked the program’s 31st consecutive season with at least 10 victories, the second-longest stretch of that nature in women’s college soccer. The Blue & White return six starters from last year’s Elite Eight run, including goalkeeper Mackenzie Gress, defenders Kayleigh Herr and Bella Ayscue, midfielder Molly Martin, and forwards MacBean and Amelia White. Penn State additionally boasts the nation’s fifth-ranked recruiting class and strongest signing group in the Big Ten Conference per TopDrawerSoccer’s final release this week. With MacBean headlining the front of the Nittany Lion XI, PSU will open its 2025 season tonight with a 7 p.m. (ET) kickoff scheduled against the Duke Blue Devils from Koskinen Stadium in Durham, North Carolina.