Gatorade today announced Reagan Riley of Mountain Brook as the 2022-2023 girls state cross country Player of the Year.

The 5-foot-6 senior raced to a second straight Class 6A individual state championship this past season with a time of 17:57.30, leading the Spartans to back-to-back team titles. Riley also won the Southern Showcase and took second at Nike Hole in the Wall Invitational in Washington. She placed ninth at the Garmin RunningLane National Championships.

“Reagan Riley reached high levels of national recognition with her victory at the Southern Showcase and a runner-up performance in Washington at the Nike Hole in the Wall Invitational, and used those experiences to repeat as state champion,” said Erik Boal, an editor at DyeStat.com. “She punctuated her season with All-America honors for the second year in a row racing on home soil at the RunningLane National Championships in Huntsville.”

Riley is the second Gatorade girls state cross country Player of the Year to be chosen from Mountain Brook.

The award recognizes not only outstanding athletic excellence, but also high standards of academic achievement and exemplary character demonstrated on and off the field. Riley is now a finalist for the prestigious Gatorade National girls cross country Player of the Year award.

The co-president of the Justice Club, organized to raise awareness about human trafficking, Riley has also volunteered locally at Alabama Game Changers where she tutors autistic youth to make them feel comfortable in new environments. She is also the secretary of the Civitan Club, which plans service projects within her community.

Riley has maintained a weighted 4.16 GPA in the classroom. She has signed a National Letter of Intent to run on scholarship at the University of Notre Dame this fall.

Riley joins recent Gatorade girls state cross country Players of the Year Crawford West (2021-2022 and 2020-2021, Vestavia Hills), Lainey Phelps (2019-2020, Homewood), and Presley Miles (2018-2019, St. James), among the state’s list of former award winners.