Congrats to Julia Warren for being named the 2011 Gatorade Player of the Year!
Courtesy Gatorade
CHICAGO (December 14, 2011) — In its 27th year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, The Gatorade Company, in collaboration with ESPNHS, today announced Julia Warren of La Cueva High School as its 2011-12 Gatorade New Mexico Volleyball Player of the Year. Warren is the first Gatorade New Mexico Volleyball Player of the Year to be chosen from La Cueva High School.
The award, which recognizes not only outstanding athletic excellence, but also high standards of academic achievement and exemplary character demonstrated on and off the court, distinguishes Warren as New Mexico’s best high school volleyball player. Now a finalist for the prestigious Gatorade National Volleyball Player of the Year award announced in December, Warren joins an elite alumni association of past state volleyball award winners, including USA Volleyball players Kim Glass (2001-02, Horseshoe HS, Penn.), Kim Willoughby (1998-99, 1999-00, Assumption HS, La.) and Ogonna Nnamani (1999-00, University HS, Ill).
The 6-foot-1 junior outside hitter recorded 618 kills, 455 digs, 78 blocks, 78 service aces and 57 assists this past season while posting a hitting percentage of .445 and leading the Bears (18-4) to the Class 5A state semifinals. The state leader in both kills and digs, Warren is a Class 5A First Team All-State selection and was one of 33 players invited to the USA Volleyball High Performance Women’s Junior A2 Team’s summer camp in July, 2011. She has collected 1,035 kills and 807 digs in her prep volleyball career.
Warren has maintained a 3.0 GPA in the classroom. She has volunteered locally with a literacy-outreach program, as a Special Olympics coach and as part of multiple community service initiatives in association with the Young Life ministry.
“Julia Warren has got a lot of different shots,” said Al Rosen, head coach of Gadsden High. “She’s very powerful. She handles the ball, defends—I even saw her as a setter last year when they were shorthanded. She carried that team, period.”
Warren has verbally committed to play volleyball on an athletic scholarship at the University of New Mexico beginning in the fall of 2013.
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 ESPNHS and the Gatorade high school sports leadership team, which work with top sport-specific experts and a media advisory board of accomplished, veteran prep sports journalists to determine the state winners in each sport.
Warren joins recent Gatorade New Mexico Volleyball Players of the Year Nathalie Castellanos (2010-11, Gadsden HighSchool), Halie Harton (2009-10, Goddard) and Kristin Valencia (2008-09, Moriarty) among the state’s list of former award winners.
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