Click here for the full 2021 All-SAA men's soccer teams
The SAA announced their 2021 men's soccer postseason award winners and All-SAA teams Tuesday, as voted by the league's head men's soccer coaches. Birmingham-Southern forward Coleman Jennings won SAA Offensive Player of the Year honors for the second straight season, while Oglethorpe head coach Jon Akin nabbed his sixth SAA Coach of the Year accolade. Oglethorpe defender Hayden Binfield capped his outstanding freshman season with a pair of awards, winning SAA Defensive Player of the Year and SAA Newcomer of the Year.
Jennings added another accolade to his burgeoning collection after winning SAA Newcomer of the Year in 2019 and SAA Offensive Player of the Year in the spring of 2021. He finished his season atop the SAA leaderboard in a variety of categories. He accrued 0.94 goals, 0.59 assists and 2.47 points per game, all of which led the conference. He also tallied 4.71 total shots and 2.82 shots on goal per game for a shot accuracy mark of 60 percent. All three of those marks led the league.
Binfield becomes just the second SAA men's soccer player to win both an SAA player of the year and the SAA Newcomer of the Year award in the same season, and the first since Birmingham-Southern's Bastian Jedliczka in 2014. He helped lead an Oglethorpe backline that tallied five shutouts on the season, accounting for 36 percent of the team's contests. He also helped the Petrels to a 1.45 goals against average en route to their sixth SAA regular season title in the last seven seasons and their fourth SAA championship game appearance in the last five. He also added three goals of his own on the year, two of them game-winners.
Akin garnered his sixth SAA Coach of the Year honor after winning the award in 2013 and 2015-18. He led his Stormy Petrels to an undefeated 6-0-1 mark in conference play to take the league's regular season crown for the sixth time in the last seven years. He also led the Petrels to the SAA title game for the fourth time in the last five seasons. Akin's team allowed just three goals in SAA regular season play, accruing a plus-18 goal differential and averaging three goals per contest.