CHICAGO (February 15, 2023) — In its 38th year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, Gatorade today announced Brandon Martz of Catalina Foothills High School is the 2022-23 Gatorade Arizona Boys Cross Country Player of the Year. Martz is the first Gatorade Arizona Boys Cross Country Player of the Year to be chosen from Catalina Foothills 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 Martz as Arizona’s best high school boys cross country player. Now a finalist for the prestigious Gatorade National Boys Cross Country Player of the Year award to be announced in February, Martz joins an elite alumni association of state awardwinners, including Parker Wolfe (2020-21, Cherry Creek High School, Greenwood Village, Colo.), Nico Young (2019-20, Newbury Park High School, Newbury Park, Calif.), Megan Goethals (2009-10, Rochester High School, Rochester Hills, Mich.) and Jordan Hasay (2008-09, Mission College Preparatory Catholic High School, San Luis Obispo, Calif.).

The 6-foot, 142-pound senior raced to the Division II individual state championship this past season, clocking the fastest all-divisions time of 15:39.4 this past season. Unbeaten against in-state competition this fall, Martz also took second at the Desert Twilight XC Festival in a personal-best 15:10.10. He opened his 2022 campaign by crossing state lines to win the Division 1 individual championship at the venerable Mt. Carmel Invitational meet in California.

Martz has volunteered locally as a dietary aide at a nursing facility and as a lab researcher at the University of Arizona. Despite being diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma, he has prospered in the sport and elsewhere. “Brandon Martz stamped himself as a true big-meet performer this past season,” noted PrepCalTrack.com editor Rich Gonzalez. “In addition to posting the fastest all-divisions time at the state meet, he recorded a major meet win at California’s Mt. Carmel Invitational and earned second place at the prestigious Desert Twilight Festival.”

Martz has maintained a weighted 4.22 GPA in the classroom. He has signed a National Letter of Intent to run on scholarship at Rice University 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.

Martz joins recent Gatorade Arizona Boys Cross Country Players of the Year Terrence Keyes (2021-22, Gilbert High School), Dayton Carlson (2020-21, Casteel High School), and Leo Daschbach (2019-20 & 2018-19, Highland 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, Middleton 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. Middleton 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.