Spring Cleaning
Haylen Ayers (with ball) is the 2025 Tennessee Gatorade Player of the Year.
How does the POY process really work?
March 28, 2025
It is time to tidy up matters for the end of the 2024-2025 high school season. The first item involves Georgia - where I reside. I was not involved with these decisions below, but received angry contact as there was a belief out there in cyberspace that I had a hand in how things came down. Below it explains what in fact happened. Following that, four split- decision player-of-the-year selections are discussed. Finally, information regarding the upcoming McDonald’s All-American games is given.
Georgia POY Controversy
Previously, I discussed the close race for Georgia Player-of-the-Year with senior Hailee Swain of Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School and junior Kate Harpring of Marist School being the two frontrunners. My position was the player who took her team the furthest should get the award. Hailee led her Holy Innocents’ team (posting 30) in upsetting nationally ranked Hebron Christian for the Georgia Private School title. Meanwhile, Kate’s Marist team lost in the semi to the eventual 4A champion Creekside.
The question came up why did Swain won the MaxPreps Georgia award for player-of-the- year while Harpring won the award sponsored by Gatorade?
Whether you like the process of either, this is how each works and they are very different.
MaxPreps awards are essentially decided by the MaxPreps primary girls’ basketball writer upon conclusion of play in each state. Thus, the release of awards starts in February and the last will likely be announced in late March or early April when Pennsylvania ends. The decision is pretty basketball-based unless an unusually negative red flag in citizenship becomes public. I had a direct role (which I no longer have) in this under the prior MaxPreps writer.
Gatorade is much more complicated with basketball, academic and community service components. Having spoken to a couple of coaches who had nominated players and an individual who used to make Gatorade picks in this sport, it is a tedious, convoluted process with a good bit of paperwork and interviews with academic advisors and opposing coaches while also having input from the candidate’s coach. The individual making the final call may have little to no personal knowledge of the players’ actual on-court performance being more of a marketing rep than basketball scout. [These same individuals may be doing other sports as well.] You have to remember that there are 51 winners (all states and DC), and this is just one of what I understand is 12 sports in which Gatorade presents awards.
The Gatorade list for girls was released in total on Thursday, March 13, 2025, but data input toward decisions probably ended about two weeks previously. Thus, it may have included the Georgia semifinal results (March 1) but not the final results where Hailee pulled the upset.
Take all the details away and look at very basic resume of each player with nothing more than scoring averages and records of teams at time of data cut off. Harpring scored more points per game and her team had a couple less losses. Harpring had led her team to a state title last year and was ranked several slots higher on a couple of public scouting lists (ESPN HoopGurlz for one). Swain’s main on-paper plus would be she was the starting point guard for the USA U17 team. However, Harpring countered this by being MVP at the super talented Overtime Select event last August and September in Atlanta.
Let us assume a push on academics and community service components. That being the case, one can understand how Kate got the Gatorade award over Hailee based on the above timeline of incomplete (full season) data.
It is a business, and the marketing firm believes the release date in mid-March gives sponsor Gatorade the most bangs for the bucks. In a perfect world, it would be nice to have had all the data (season concluded) but this was not going to be feasible given the release timeline and paperwork that I am told is involved. There was no room for any last-minute switches except for some negative character issue going public very near the release date.
I am a big fan of both of these players, but given how the season ended for each, from a basketball perspective Hailee Swain should have gotten both awards and should get any locally based state-player-of-the-year awards for this past season. Congratulations to Hailee Swain for getting chosen a McDonald’s All-American and if Kate Harpring can continue on current course, she will have a great chance of getting this honor as a senior next year.
Four split decisions that I thought were for the best with both honored players deserving recognition.
Illinois
Gatorade – Destiny Jackson
The Illinois signee is the highest ranked Illinois guard (#25 overall) on the ESPN HoopGurlz for 2025. Jackson is very talented but with better talent surrounding her than Galvan below, she was unable to take her Whitney Young team as far as Galvan did.
Destiny Jackson early in her club career with Mac Irvin Fire when they competed in The PRIME event - Finals.
MaxPreps – Aubrey Galvan
Last year, Vanderbilt signee Galvan led her Loyola Academy team (undefeated) to the Illinois 4A title. This year with significantly less talent, she got them to the semifinals, losing in overtime.
Iowa
Gatorade – Libby Fandel
Kansas signee Fandel (#45 on HoopGurlz 2025) led her Xavier High School team to the state 4A title setting several tournament records along the way.
MaxPreps - Jenica Lewis
Junior Lewis (ranked #15 by ESPN HoopGurlz) was the best player over the course of the season for nationally ranked undefeated 5A champion Johnston High School.
Janica Lewis at the recently held Stewie 30 camp in Miami.
Tennessee
Gatorade – Haylen Ayers
Sophomore Ayers led her University School of Jackson team to the Tennessee Division II – Class A semi-final posting 40 points and 13 rebounds in a losing effort. She is ranked #3 by ESPN HoopGurlz for the 2027 class.
MaxPreps – Kimora Fields
Junior Fields was the best player on Bradley Central’s 4A champions which completed a three-peat as state champions with a high national ranking. There is something to be said for sacrificing scoring for team success.
Washington
Gatorade – Brynn McGaughy
Washington signee McGaughy (ranked #21 on HoopGurlz) led teams to state titles in 2023 (Colfax in 2B) and 2025 (Central Valley in 3A). As noted below, she has also received McDonald’s honors.
MaxPreps – Cheyenne Hull
Sophomore Hull led her A.C. Davis team to the state 4A title with multiple strong 20+ point performances at the state tourney in Tacoma. She has major D1 offers.
The 48th annual McDonald's All-American Games will be played on Tuesday, April 1, 2025, at Barclays Center, Brooklyn, NY.
Broadcast information: The Sprite® Jam Fest will air Monday, March 31 at 7:15 p.m. ET on ESPN2. The 2025 McDonald's All-American Games will start with the girls game on Tuesday, April 1 at 6:30 p.m. ET on ESPN2 and the boys game will immediately follow on ESPN at 9:00 p.m. ET.
You might ask where are the home bases for the 2024-2025 McDonald’s All-American selectees?
California [SoCal ^] 3 (Deal, Knox, Morris)
Colorado 2 (Betts & Eschmeyer)
Florida (Civil) total of 5 with an * : FL by way of Minnesota 1 (Crump - Montverde); FL by way of Australia 1 (Somfai – IMG ); FL by way of Ontario,Canada 2 (Makeer - Montverde & Prawl) - IMG
Georgia 1 (Swain)
Kansas 1 (Davis)
Kentucky 2 (Johnson & Macy)
Massachusetts 1 (Carroll)
Missouri 1 (Speiser)
New Jersey 1 (Pauldo)
Ohio 1 (Alexander)
Oregon 1 (Davidson)
Texas 2 (Chavez & McDowell)
Utah 1 (Skinner)
Virginia 1 (Brooks)
Washington 1 (McGaughy)
^ For reference, I mention that all California kids were from Southern California and more specifically the strong CIF Southern Section.
*For Florida, I broke out the academy players whose roots of development were not from Florida. Civil is a Florida state-series product.