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June 24, 2024 by Seth Polansky, AZPreps365
In its 39th year of honoring the nation’s most elite high school athletes, Gatorade today announced Lourdes Lauterborn of Xavier College Preparatory is the 2023-24 Gatorade Arizona Girls Soccer Player of the Year. Lauterborn is the fifth Gatorade Arizona Girls Soccer Player of the Year to be chosen from Xavier College Preparatory.
The award, which celebrates the nation’s top high school athletes for excellence on the field, in the classroom and in the community, distinguishes Lauterborn as Arizona’s best high school girls soccer player. From CEOs and coaches to star athletes, Gatorade Player of the Year winners showcase the power of sport, touting an all-star group of alumni that includes Aly Wagner (1997-98, Presentation High School, Calif.), Mallory Swanson (2014-15, Mountain Vista High School, Colo.) and Kennedy Fuller (2022-23 & 2021-22, Southlake Carroll High School, Texas).
The 5-foot-8 senior midfielder led the Gators to a 13-0-3 record and a fourth-straight Conference 6A state championship this past season. Lauterborn scored 13 goals and passed for six assists while supporting a defense that conceded just five goals and posted 11 shutouts. The Conference 6A Player of the Year, she was a finalist for the 2023-24 Arizona Republic Player of the Year award.
Lauterborn was a state winner in the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association essay contest, writing about how high school athletics enhanced her educational experiences. She has volunteered locally with St. Vincent De Paul and the Hope Women’s Center. A chairperson of the Arizona Interscholastic Association’s Student Leadership Advisory Committee, she has also donated her time to the Special Olympics. “Lourdes is a field commander,” said Barb Chura, head coach of Xavier College Preperatory. “She is a tremendous competitor and an exceptionally talented central midfielder. Using her superior soccer skill set combined with sprinter’s speed made Lourdes the core of our team.”
Lauterborn has maintained a weighted 4.36 GPA in the classroom. She will attend Dartmouth College, where she will play soccer, beginning this fall.
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.
Lauterborn joins recent Gatorade Arizona Girls Soccer Players of the Year Bella Leonard (2022-23, Xavier College Preperatory), Tatum Thomason (2021-22, Liberty High School), Maggie Cagle (2020-21, Arcadia High School) and Isabella Struckman (2019-20, Chaparral High School), among the state’s list of former award winners.
As part of Gatorade’s commitment to breaking down barriers in sport, every Player of the Year also receives a grant to donate to a social impact partner. To date, Gatorade Player of the Year winners’ grants have totaled more than $4.9 million across more than 1,600 organizations.
To learn more about the Gatorade Player of the Year program, check out past winners or to nominate studentathletes, visit playeroftheyear.gatorade.com or follow us on social media on Facebook at facebook.com/GatoradePOY, Instagram at instagram.com/Gatorade and Twitter at twitter.com/Gatorade.
