INDIANAPOLIS (USBWA) – Marisa Ingemi of the San Francisco Chronicle – who covers Stanford, Cal and all things women’s sports for the paper – has been named the winner of the 2025 Rising Star Award by the Women’s Board of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association.
She joins national men's college basketball beat writer Brendan Marks of The Athletic, who has won's the men's Rising Star Award and will be honored at the Men's Final Four in San Antonio next month.
A 2017 graduate of Boston University, Ingemi has worked at the Chronicle since 2022 and had previous stops at the Seattle Times and the Boston Herald, where she covered the NHL. She has also had freelance pieces published by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Yahoo, and FiveThirtyEight.
The Rising Star Award, created in 2010, recognizes journalistic excellence by reporters who are under 30 years of age. Starting in 2022, awards have been presented for coverage of men’s and women’s basketball. Previous winners include Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic (now at NBC Sports), Mirin Fader of The Ringer, Alexa Philippou of ESPN, Cora Hall of the Knoxville News Sentinel, and Emily Adams of the Hartford Courant.
“I’m so honored to even be considered for this award, not to mention actually winning it. So many superstars have won this and to be mentioned in the same category is really humbling,” Ingemi said. “I feel like I am so lucky to get to do what I do every day and be engaged in women’s basketball at this moment of time, especially somewhere like the Bay Area, where it means so much to people. I want to thank the USBWA for recognizing the impact of women’s basketball coverage and for including me in their long list of tremendous reporters.”
In addition to covering Stanford and Cal at the Chronicle, Ingemi also covers the NWSL’s Bay FC and will soon be the beat writer for the newest WNBA team, the Golden State Valkyries. Last fall, her work covering San Jose State volleyball garnered widespread praise.
Over her tenure at the Chronicle, the 28-year-old Ingemi has piled up awards and national recognition. In 2023, she was a finalist for the APSE’s Billie Jean King Award for outstanding women’s sports coverage, and in 2024 she was awarded the Excellence in Sports Writing award by NLGJA, the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists. Ingemi was also voted co-California Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association in January. And back in 2022, she was featured in The Best American Sports Writing.
Michelle Smith, the winner of the Basketball Hall of Fame's Curt Gowdy Media Award in 2025 and a former reporter for the Chronicle, has long admired Ingemi’s work.
“Marisa has the qualities of a great reporter. She is dogged, she is a talented writer and she understands instinctively what makes a great story,” said Smith, who is also a USBWA Women’s Board Member and was inducted into the USBWA Hall of Fame last year. “At the Chronicle, she has become a must-read and she is setting the standard for newspapers across the nation and what great things can happen when they embrace women's sports with the right person doing the work."
Ingemi will be presented with the award at the USBWA’s annual brunch at the NCAA Women’s Final Four in Tampa, Florida. More details about the event will be available soon.
USBWA WOMEN'S RISING STAR AWARD WINNERS
2020: Nicole Auerbach, The Athletic
2021: Mirin Fader, The Ringer
2022: Alexa Philippou, ESPN
2023: Cora Hall, Knoxville News Sentinel
2024: Emily Adams, Hartford Courant
2025: Marisa Ingemi, San Francisco Chronicle