CHICAGO — In its 40th year of honoring the nation’s most elite high school athletes, Gatorade today announced Imani Galera-Young of Chandler High School is the 2024-25 Gatorade Arizona Girls Track & Field Player of the Year.

Gatorade Player of the Year is the top honor in high school sports, celebrating the nation’s best high school athletes for their success on the field, in the classroom and in the community. The award distinguishes GaleraYoung as Arizona's best high school girls track & field athlete, and she joins an impressive group of alumni that spans CEOs, coaches and star athletes such as Sanya Richards (2001-02, St. Thomas Aquinas High School, Fl.), Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (2014-15, 2015-16 & 2016-17, Union Catholic High School, N.J.) and Angelina Napoleon (2022-23, Allegany-Limestone Central School, N.Y.).

The 5-foot-9 junior sprinter and hurdler won the AIA state championship in the 300-meter hurdles this past season to lead the Wolves to the overall team title. Galera-Young also won a pair of individual state crowns at the Division I state meet in the 100 and 300 hurdles. Her seasonal-best clocking of 41.50 seconds in the 300 at the Chandler Rotary Invitational ranked No. 15 nationally while her PR of 13.69 in the 100 hurdles this spring ranked No. 37 among girls prep competitors. She ran the second leg for the state record-breaking 4x100 relay quartet (45.12) and took seventh in the 400 hurdles at Nike Outdoor Nationals to earn All-American status.

A member of the National Honor Society, Galera-Young serves in her school’s Black Student Union and United Sisters Youth Group. She has volunteered locally on behalf ofthe Rice-A-Roni Thanksgiving food drive, which annually collects more than 1,000 boxes of rice for the Chandler Care Center. “Only a junior, Imani Galera-Young has evolved into one of the state’s premier combo hurdlers, also riding that speed as a contributor on the school’s state record performance in the short relay,” said Rich Gonzalez of PrepCalTrack.com.

Galera-Young has maintained a 4.30 weighted GPA in the classroom. She

The Gatorade Player of the Year program annually recognizes one winner in the District of Columbia and each of the 50 states across 12 different high school sports – 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.

As part of Gatorade’s commitment to breaking down barriers in sport, every Player of the Year also receives a grant to donate to a social impact partner. To date, the Gatorade Player of the Year program has provided more than $5.6 million in grants to winners across more than 2,000 organizations.

To learn more about the Gatorade Player of the Year program, check out past winners or to nominate student - athletes, visit playeroftheyear.gatorade.com or follow us on social media on Instagram at instagram.com/Gatorade, Facebook at facebook.com/GatoradePOY and X (Twitter) at x.com/Gatorade.