CHICAGO – Valor Christian’s Brooke Wilson has been named the 2022-23 Gatorade Colorado Girls Cross Country Runner of the Year, announced Monday, Jan. 23. Wilson is the first Gatorade Colorado Girls Cross Country Player of the Year to be chosen from Valor Christian.
The senior raced to the Class 5A individual state championship this past season with a classification meet-record time of 16:59.2, leading the Eagles to third place as a team. Wilson also won the Desert Twilight Festival in Arizona and took second at Nike Cross Nationals in Oregon, earning All-America honors for the second time in her career following her 12th-place finish at the Garmin RunningLane National Championships in 2021.
Wilson has volunteered locally with Open Door Ministries and their initiative to help feed the homeless in addition to working with Operation Christmas Child and Art For The Nations. She also works in her church nursery. Wilson has maintained a 3.52 GPA in the classroom. She has signed a National Letter of Intent to run on scholarship at Wake Forest University this fall.
“Wilson achieved one of the most remarkable performances of her career by becoming the first girl in Colorado prep history to break the 17-minute barrier on the state championship course at Norris-Penrose Events Center,” said Erik Boal, an editor for DyeStat.com. “She also emerged as one of the nation’s elite performers in 2022 with her victory at the Desert Twilight Festival in Arizona, then capped her memorable season with a runner-up showing at Nike Cross Nationals, the best finish by a Colorado female athlete at the event since 2016.”
The award, which recognizes not only outstanding athletic excellence, but also high standards of academic achievement and exemplary character demonstrated on and off the field, distinguishes Wilson as Colorado’s best high school girls cross country player. Now a finalist for the prestigious Gatorade National Girls Cross Country Player of the Year award to be announced in January, Wilson joins an elite alumni association of state award-winners, including Natalie Cook (2021-22, Flower Mound High School, Flower Mound, Texas), Katelyn Tuohy (2019-20, North Rockland High School, Thiels, N.Y.), Megan Goethals (2009-10, Rochester High School, Rochester Hills, Mich.) and Jordan Hasay (2008-09, Mission College Preparatory Catholic High School, San Luis Obispo, Calif.).
The Gatorade Player of the Year program annually recognizes one winner in the District of Columbia and each of the 50 states that sanction high school football, girls volleyball, boys and girls cross country, boys and girls basketball, boys and girls soccer, baseball, softball, and boys and girls track & field, and awards one National Player of the Year in each sport. The selection process is administered by the Gatorade Player of the Year Selection Committee, which leverages experts including coaches, scouts, media and others as sources to help evaluate and determine the state winners in each sport.
Wilson joins recent Gatorade Colorado Girls Cross Country Players of the Year Riley Stewart (2021-22, 2020-21, & 2019-20, Cherry Creek High School) and Quinn McConnell (2018-19, Peak to Peak Charter School), among the state’s list of former award winners.