BROUGHTON STANDOUT NAMED GATORADE NORTH CAROLINA GIRLS CROSS COUNTRY RUNNER OF THE YEAR
CHICAGO — In its 28th year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, The Gatorade Company, in collaboration with USA TODAY High School Sports, has announced that Megan Sullivan of Broughton High School in Raleigh is its 2012-13 Gatorade North Carolina Girls Cross Country Runner of the Year. Sullivan is the first Gatorade North Carolina Girls Cross Country Runner of the Year to be chosen from Broughton 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 racecourse, distinguishes Sullivan as North Carolina’s best high school girls cross country runner.
The 5-foot-7 junior raced to the NCHSAA 4-A individual state championship this past season with a time of 17:48.03, clocking the fastest time among North Carolina competitors and leading the Caps to third place as a team. Sullivan placed 55th at the Nike Cross Nationals Southeast Regional championships in 19:05. She won four regular-season meets and recorded the state’s top time at the Trinity/Valkyrie Invitational.
Sullivan has maintained a 3.66 weighted GPA in the classroom. In addition to annually completing more than 25 hours of community service for her school, including community-cleanup efforts and a service-mission trip to the Dominican Republic, she has volunteered on behalf of the Lacy Elementary School Fall Festival, the City of Oaks Marathon, a peer-mentoring program for special needs students and as part of her church’s youth group.
“I inherited the girls cross country and track head coaching position after six years of coaching the boys team,” said Broughton head coach David Christian. “In doing so, I needed a leader and someone who could and would model the values and characteristics of success. Megan Sullivan has become that leader. She has not only been selected as the girls track and cross country MVP, but she models that role exceptionally—not just as our top runner and state champion, but as a team leader and a true supporter of her teammates’ goals and successes.”
Sullivan will begin her senior year of high school 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 high school sports leadership team in partnership with USA TODAY High School Sports, 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.
Sullivan joins Gatorade North Carolina Girls Cross Country Runners of the Year Sammy George (2011-12, Millbrook High School), and Darby Middlebrook (2010-11, Watauga High School) as recent NCHSAA athletes who have won the cross country award since its inception in 2007.
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