In a year that will be remembered as the most dominant in Bond University’s sporting history, it took a pair of World Championship gold medals for our 2025 Sportspersons of the Year to rise above the pack.
With premierships in every Tier 1 program, multiple world champions emerging from the Bond Swimming Club, and BESPies (Bond Elite Sports Program)producing eye-catching performances on national and international stages, the judges faced an almost impossible task.
Out of that extraordinary field, Kye Robinson and Milla Jansen were declared Bond University’s Sportspersons of the Year.
After being a 2024 nominee, Robinson took top honours for his gold medal performance at the World Triathlon Championship in Wollongong, while Jansen won her first gong in her first semester of study at Bond for her achievements at the World Aquatics Championships where she took home two golds in the 4x100m and 4x200m freestyle relays.
The award for Team of the Year went to the men’s rugby club for their Cinderella season which saw them win the Queensland Premier Rugby premiership, a first for the university.
The Glenn Corcoran Coach of the Year award, named in honour of the legendary Bond Sport strength and conditioning coach who passed away earlier this year, was awarded to Sapphire head coach Rebecca Stower, who brought home the university’s first Premier League Netball championship.
Bond Sport’s night of nights, the prestigious Blues Awards, were celebrated at the Princeton Room on Friday.
Robinson, a Bachelor of Business graduate, edged out a field which included swimmer Jesse Coleman and canoe sprint stars Dylan Littlehales and Pierre van der Westhuyzen.
He became the World Triathlon Champion in the 20-24 age division with a dazzling performance on home soil and has already qualified for next year’s 70.3 Ironman World Championships.
“Receiving this award has made me reflect on the massive amount of work that’s gone into getting me to this point – not just from me, but especially from my parents,” Robinson said.
“Their support has been fundamental to my entire journey, and I hope the results I’ve delivered show how much I appreciate everything they’ve done.
“Additionally, it can’t go without saying that Bond and their support, especially from Hayley Martin, allowed me to capture all the triathlon opportunities available to me throughout my degree.
“Whether it was a training camp in France or a race in Germany or Spain, having this full support allowed me to put all my focus into races when I needed to.
“I think very few universities can offer such an important competitive advantage to athletes.
“Coming up I have T100 Qatar, the T100 Gold Coast, and then both Age Group World Championships for Standard Distance and 70.3, which I’ve already qualified for.”
2025 Hancock Prospecting Swimming Excellence Scholar Jansen may still be familiarising herself with the Bond classrooms, but she is no stranger to the Peter Beckwith pool, having joined the squad in 2018.
The former Junior World Champion made a splash on her step-up to open age events in 2025, starring at the World Championships in Singapore.
Her electric third leg of the 4x100m freestyle relay helped Australia storm to gold in the event they have dominated since the London Olympics.
And she wasn’t done, backing up with another gold medal in the 4x200m freestyle relay to confirm her arrival as a major force in Australian swimming.
"There were so many amazing athletes in this room who could've received this award, so I feel really grateful to win this award," Jansen said.
“It’s been a highlight year for me, especially winning two gold medals at the World Champs and getting four Bull Sharks on the Australian team.
“I’m so grateful to win this award, and I’m excited to keep chipping away at my training ahead of what will be a big swimming year in 2026.”
Premiership-winning prop and Queensland Red Harrison Usher collected the Team of the Year award on behalf of the first grade rugby team.
“Winning the grand final was a very special and surreal moment especially after the start to the season that we had. But once we got to the end of the season, to the finals campaign, we had the confidence and went all the way through,” Usher said.
“Heeno (Mick Heenan) our coach said to us every time after we lost a game that he believed in us and backed us to beat every team by 30 points.
“Once we found our rhythm and truly believed that we were a solid side and played like a bunch of blokes that truly do believe and support each other, that's when we kept winning.
“I think it just came down to the hunger that we held to be in the finals, and once we were in that position I don’t think there was a doubt in anyone’s mind that we weren’t going to go all the way.”
The field for the Glenn Corcoran Coach of the Year award was stacked with Bond’s Tier 1 sports programs delivering four premierships and the swimming club producing multiple world champions and extending its dominance over UniSport Nationals.
“There was such a great calibre of coaches nominated. I was really quite surprised to win the award,” Stower said.
“It was quite emotional with it being the inaugural Glenn Corcoran Award.
“I’m so lucky, I know that to a certain extent we put the expectations in place, and we set the tone of what we want to achieve and how we want to behave. But at the end of the day, we have to have players and staff who buy into that, and I felt like I had everybody's full support 100 percent of the time.”