Colorado Mammoth 2026 NLL Award Winners

When the National Lacrosse League handed out its end-of-season hardware in May 2026, an unusual amount of it traveled to Denver. The Colorado Mammoth — the Front Range's pro box lacrosse team, a half-hour down US-36 from Boulder — collected three of the league's marquee honors: Coach of the Year, GM of the Year for the front office, and an All-NLL selection for its top forward. For a franchise that went 12-6 and pushed a perennial contender to overtime in the playoffs, the awards were less a surprise than a confirmation.

Pat Coyle, NLL Coach of the Year

The headline honor went to head coach Pat Coyle, named the league's Coach of the Year. The award — long associated with the legacy of NLL coaching pioneer Les Bartley — recognizes the bench boss whose team most exceeded expectations or played with the clearest identity over the season. Colorado checked both boxes.

Coach-of-the-year recognition almost never comes from talent alone; it comes from a team that plays organized, disciplined lacrosse and rarely beats itself. That was the Mammoth's signature in 2025-26. They defended with structure, ran a dangerous transition game, and converted a strong regular season into a playoff berth. Coyle's staff got buy-in from a deep roster — in box lacrosse, where teams roll multiple lines through a 30-second-shot-clock sprint, getting every runner to play the same disciplined way is the whole job. The league's coaches and writers noticed.

If you want the full arc of the season that earned the award, our 2025-26 season recap walks through the regular season, the playoff run, and the one-goal overtime loss that ended it.

Brad Self, NLL GM of the Year

The Mammoth's second honor recognized the work above the bench: general manager Brad Self was named NLL GM of the Year for assembling and managing the roster that produced Colorado's season. It's an award fans tend to overlook, because a general manager's fingerprints are harder to see than a coach's or a scorer's — but in a salary-capped league with a short roster, roster construction is everything.

A box lacrosse team lives or dies on depth. With only a handful of runners dressing each night and no room for passengers, every signing, draft pick, and trade has outsized weight. A GM of the Year award signals that the person building the Mammoth roster made the right calls — identifying talent, managing the cap, and keeping a contending core together. The coaching staff gets the best out of the roster; the GM decides what that roster is in the first place. In 2025-26, both halves of that equation worked, and the league recognized both.

Andrew Kew Earns All-NLL Honors

The third award went to a player: forward Andrew Kew earned an All-NLL team selection, the league's recognition of its top performers by position. All-NLL teams are voted at the end of the regular season and function as the league's equivalent of an all-star or all-pro team — being named to one means you were among the best at your position across the entire NLL.

For the Mammoth, Kew was the engine of the offense. Box lacrosse scoring is a fast, physical, give-and-go game in a tight space, and the forwards who stand out combine a quick release with the strength to finish through contact at the crease. Kew gave Colorado a reliable threat that opponents had to scheme against every night, which in turn created room for the rest of the attack to operate. An All-NLL nod confirms what Mammoth fans saw all season: he was one of the league's genuine difference-makers.

What These Awards Actually Recognize

It's worth pausing on what each of these honors measures, because they reward very different things — and that's exactly why sweeping all three is meaningful.

The Coach of the Year award is fundamentally about overperformance and identity: did a team play better than its raw talent suggested, and did it have a clear, repeatable way of winning? It's voted with the whole season in mind, not a single hot streak. A GM of the Year award measures something earlier in the chain — the decisions made months and years before the season even started, when the roster was assembled through the draft, free agency, and trades. By the time the games are played, those calls are locked in; the award judges whether they were the right ones. And an All-NLL selection is the purest individual honor of the three, naming the best players in the league at each position based on regular-season performance.

Put together, the three awards span the entire organization: the long-range roster decisions, the in-season coaching, and the on-floor production. A team can get lucky in one category in a given year. Getting recognized in all three at once is much harder to fake, which is why this particular haul says more about the Mammoth than any single trophy would on its own.

Why a Three-Award Haul Matters

Plenty of teams collect an individual award in a given year. Sweeping a coaching honor, an executive honor, and an All-NLL selection in the same season is rarer, and it tells you something specific: the Mammoth are well-run from top to bottom. The front office built the roster, the coaching staff maximized it, and the best player on it performed at an all-league level. That's a healthy organization, not a one-season fluke riding a hot streak.

For a franchise chasing a championship, that kind of structural strength is the foundation that matters. Box lacrosse titles are won by teams that are sound in all three areas — front office, bench, and floor — because the playoffs are short and unforgiving, and there's nowhere to hide a weakness. Colorado's 2026 awards say the foundation is in place. The next step is turning that into a deeper playoff run than the quarterfinal exit that closed 2025-26.

What It Means for Boulder-Area Fans

For lacrosse families in Boulder County, the takeaway is simple: the best lacrosse organization in the region is a short drive — or a Flatiron Flyer bus ride — away. An award-winning coach, a top-flight front office, and an All-NLL scorer all play their home games at Ball Arena in downtown Denver from December through the spring. That's a rare resource for young players: a chance to watch elite box lacrosse, in person, played the disciplined way the league just honored. For a youth or high school player still learning the game, watching an All-NLL forward operate at full speed — or seeing how a Coach-of-the-Year team defends the crease and runs in transition — is the kind of lesson no practice can replicate. It's worth the short trip down US-36 at least once a season.

If you're new to the indoor game, our box lacrosse explainer covers the rules and why so many field players train indoors in the off-season. And for the bigger picture on the franchise — Ball Arena, the schedule, and how to get tickets — start with the Colorado Mammoth guide.

Awards are a snapshot, not a destination. But a season that produces a Coach of the Year, an Executive of the Year, and an All-NLL forward is a strong signal that the Mammoth are building toward something. Keep an eye on the team's official site and NLL.com as the next season approaches — this group has earned the attention.