PRESS RELEASE: In its third decade of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, The Gatorade Company, in partnership with ESPN RISE, today announced Sarah Killion of the Fort Wayne Fever as its 2008-09 Gatorade Indiana Girls Soccer Player of the Year. Killion is the first Gatorade Indiana Girls Soccer Player of the Year to be chosen from the Fort Wayne Fever.
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 Killion as Indiana’s best high school girl’s soccer player. Killion is now a finalist for the prestigious Gatorade National Girls Soccer Player of the Year award to be announced in May.
The 5-foot-6 sophomore midfielder recorded 19 goals and 25 assists this past season with her school team, Bishop Dwenger, leading the Saints (16-1-2) to the Sectional championship game. A member of the U.S. Youth Soccer Region II Olympic Development Program team, Killion was a First Team All-State selection by the Indiana Coaches of Girls’ Sports Association and the Indiana Soccer Coaches Association. Killion has scored 27 goals and passed for 38 assists to this point in her scholastic career.
Killion has maintained a 4.33 weighted GPA in the classroom. A local youth soccer coach with the Fever Cadets Program, she has volunteered with Saints on the Move, Bishop Dwenger’s school-wide service project, and she has fundraised to benefit cancer research.
“Sarah is a play-maker, a very possession-oriented player with incredible vision,” said Bobby Poursanidis, the director of coaching for the Fort Wayne Fever club program. “She plays balls that are dangerous and she’ll score, too. If you’re looking for a player to fit in a program to make everyone better, Sarah is that person.”
Sarah played both in the Super Y-League Program and was a starter for the Fever’s W-League team.
Killion has verbally committed to play soccer on scholarship at UCLA in the fall of 2011.
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, girl’s volleyball, boys and girls cross country, boys and girl’s basketball, boys and girl’s soccer, baseball, softball, and boys and girls track & field. The selection process is administered by ESPN RISE, which works with top sport-specific experts and a media advisory board of accomplished, veteran prep sports journalists to determine the state winners in each sport.
BACKGROUND
In 1985, The Gatorade Company established an award honoring America’s elite high school studentathletes. The goal was simple: honor America’s elite high school athletes who have succeeded on and off the field in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Since then, the Gatorade Player of the Year program has become the most prestigious high school athletic award in the nation.
In 23 years, Gatorade has honored more than 10,000 State Players of the Year and 199 National Players of the Year. That list includes many of today’s top professional athletes, such as Peyton Manning, Lisa Leslie, Kevin Garnett, Alex Rodriguez, Kerri Walsh, Derek Jeter, Allyson Felix and Emmitt Smith.
