I’ve been lucky enough to be a voter in the Gatorade Athlete of the Year award for the last four years. And now its time to vote for the 2011 award.
Here is the fact sheet on this year’s voting (.pdf)
When I go to vote, I consider the following factor’s from the athlete’s resume: athletic accomplishments, GPA, amount and level of involvement in their community and the time frame of their accomplishments. I also look at the type of community involvement they do. A lot of athletes do volunteer work as coaches or in their sport which is great. But I’m more impressed when they show they can go out of their comfort zone into areas that have nothing to do with sports.
Gatorade does a good job of filtering out those that only have athletic achievement and lack in the academic and community aspect. Which makes the voting really hard.
For the girls, it came down to Morgan Brian (Soccer, St. Simmons, Georgia) and Aisling Cuffe (Cross Country, New Windsor, New York). Their athletic achievements are off the charts. But Brian’s two year term as class president and long list of community related activities gave her the edge.
On the boys side, my top three candidates were Justin Worley (Football, Rockhill, South Carolina), Bradley Beal (basketball, St. Louis, Missouri) and Lukas Verzbicas (Cross Country, Orland Park, Illinois). I went with Worley. Not only has he been dominant on the field for three years (state title and state records in TD, completions and yardage) his community based service is as diverse as I’ve seen.