PRESS RELEASE | In its 37th year of honoring the nation's best high school athletes, Gatorade today announced Agur Dwol of Mullen High School is the 2021-22 Gatorade Colorado Girls Track & Field Player of the Year. Dwol is the first Gatorade Colorado Girls Track & Field Player of the Year to be chosen from Mullen 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 field, distinguishes Dwol as Colorado's best high school girls track & field athlete. Now a finalist for the prestigious Gatorade National Girls Track & Field Player of the Year award to be announced in July, Dwol joins an elite alumni association of state award-winners in 12 sports, including Lolo Jones (1997-98, Roosevelt High School, Iowa), Allyson Felix (2002-03, Los Angeles Baptist High School, Calif.), Robert Griffin III (2006-07, Copperas Cove High School, Texas), Grant Fisher (2014- 15 & 2013-14, Grand Blanc High School, Mich.) and Candace Hill (2014-15, Rockdale County High School, Ga.).
The 5-foot-9 senior soared a state-record 42 feet, 5.5 inches to win the triple jump at the Class 4A state meet this past season, which ranked as the nation's No. 2 performance among girls prep competitors in 2022. In addition, Dwol leapt 20-1.75 to win the long jump and ran the lead leg on Mullen's victorious 4x200-meter relay. She also captured the triple jump at June's Nike Outdoor Nationals with an effort of 42-3.5, placing fifth in the long jump for good measure.
A member of her school's sports medicine team, Dwol has organized blood-donation drives in her community. "Agur is only four-years-old in terms of track experience, so her ceiling is very high," said Mullen coach Darius Reed. "Our big thing this year was to go out and have fun and not make this seem like a job, and that's what she has done. The more fun she has, the better she seems to jump."
Dwol has maintained a B average in the classroom. She has signed a National Letter of Intent to compete on scholarship at the University of Oklahoma 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. Dwol joins recent Gatorade Colorado Girls Track & Field Players of the Year Riley Stewart (2020-21, Cherry Creek High School), Taylor James (2019-20, Niwot High School), and Anna Hall (2018-19 & 2017-18, Valor Christian High School), among the state's list of former award winners.
Gatorade has a long-standing history of serving athlete communities and understands how sports instill valuable lifelong skills on and off the field. Through Gatorade's "Play it Forward" platform, Dwol has the opportunity to award a $1,000 grant to a local or national organization of their choosing that helps young athletes realize the benefits of playing sports. Dwol is also eligible to submit a short video explaining why the organization they chose is deserving of one of twelve $10,000 spotlight grants, which will be announced throughout the year. To date, Gatorade Player of the Year winners' grants have totaled more than $3.5 million across more than 1,300 organizations.
Since the program's inception in 1985, Gatorade Player of the Year award recipients have won hundreds of professional and college championships, and many have also turned into pillars in their communities, becoming coaches, business owners and educators.
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.
