Malcolm Brickhouse named Gatorade Virginia Boys Soccer Player of the Year

CHICAGO — In its 36th year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, Gatorade today announced Malcolm Brickhouse of Charlottesville High School as its 2020-21 Gatorade Virginia Boys Soccer Player of the Year.

Brickhouse is the first Gatorade Virginia Boys Soccer Player of the Year to be chosen from Charlottesville 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 Brickhouse as Virginia’s best high school boys soccer player. Brickhouse joins an elite alumni association of state award-winners in 12 sports, including: Alexi Lalas (1987-88, Cranbrook High School, Mich.), Steve Cherundolo (1996-97, Mt. Carmel High School, Calif.), Abby Wambach (1997-98, Our Lady of Mercy School of Young Women, N.Y.), Heather O’Reilly (2001-02 & 2002-03, East Brunswick High School, N.J.), Matt Besler (2004-05, Blue Valley West High School, Kans.), Jack Harrison (2013-14, Berkshire High School, Mass.) and Mallory Pugh (2014-15, Mountain Vista High School, Colo.).

The 6-foot, 160-pound senior midfielder scored 13 goals and passed for 13 assists this past season, leading the Black Knights (9-1-2) to the Region 3C Tournament semifinals. A second team All-State selection as a sophomore, Brickhouse helped lead Charlottesville to the 2019 Class 3 state title. He concluded his prep soccer career with 30 goals and 35 assists.

Brickhouse is a co-founder of Charlottesville High’s Discussion Club, where students meet to discuss current events and political and social issues. A member of the Spanish National Honor Society, he has volunteered locally as a youth soccer coach. “Malcolm has been a fantastic player to see and to make plans to try and stop,” said David Rivera, head coach of Monticello High. “He is very bright, a leader and knows how to control certain situations. He makes Charlottesville tick.”

Brickhouse has maintained a weighted 4.34 GPA in the classroom. He has signed a National Letter of Intent to play soccer on scholarship at the University of Virginia 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 Commit tee, which works with top sport-specific experts and a media advisory board of accomplished, veteran prep sports journalists to determine the state winners in each sport.

Brickhouse joins recent Gatorade Virginia Boys Soccer Players of the Year Michael Meese (2019-20, Jamestown High School), Clay Obara (2018-19, Frank W. Cox High School), Bryan Silver (2017-18, Oakton High School), and Jacob Labovitz (2016-17, Langley High School), among the state’s list of former award winners.

Through Gatorade’s cause marketing platform “Play it Forward,” Brickhouse has the opportunity to award a $1,000 grant to a local or national youth sports organization of their choosing. Brickhouse is also eligible to submit a 30-second 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 $2.7 million across 1,117 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.