Shay Montgomery honored as Gatorade Virginia Girls Soccer Player of the Year

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

Montgomery is the first Gatorade Virginia Girls Soccer Player of the Year to be chosen from Yorktown 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 Montgomery as Virginia’s best high school girls soccer player.

Montgomery 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 5-foot-9 junior midfielder scored 20 goals and passed for 12 assists this past season, leading the Patriots (13-2) to the Region 6D tournament semifinals. Montgomery tallied seven multi-goal games including three hat tricks in her first season of high school soccer due to her prior club soccer commitments. She is ranked as the nation’s No. 36 recruit in the Class of 202 2 by TopDrawerSoccer.com.

An award-winning poet, Montgomery has volunteered locally as a peer mentor and youth soccer coach. “Shay is an excellent player who is able to control the middle of the field,” said Rob Bouchard, head coach of McLean High. “She is a threat to bot h score and set up scoring opportunities.”

Montgomery has maintained a weighted 4.03 GPA in the classroom. She has made a verbal commitment to play soccer on scholarship at the University of South Carolina beginning in the fall of 2022.

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 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.

Montgomery joins recent Gatorade Virginia Girls Soccer Players of the Year Aria Nagai (2019-20, Chantilly High School), Julia Leas (2018-19, James Madison High School), and Claire Constant (2017-18 & 2016-17, T.C. Williams High School), among the state’s list of former award winners.