In its 37th year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, Gatorade today announced Ashlynn Shade of Noblesville High School is the 2021-22 Gatorade Indiana Girls Basketball Player of the Year. Shade is the second Gatorade Indiana Girls Basketball Player of the Year to be chosen from Noblesville 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 court, distinguishes Shade as Indiana’s best high school girls basketball player. Now a finalist for the prestigious Gatorade National Girls Basketball Player of the Year award to be announced in March, Shade joins an elite alumni association of state award-winners in 12 sports, including Skylar Diggins-Smith (2008-09, Washington High School, Ind.), Nneka Ogwumike (2007-08, CyFair High School, Texas), Maya Moore (2006-07, Collins Hill High School, Ga.), Candace Parker (2002-03 & 2003-04, Naperville Central High School, Ill.), and Lisa Leslie (1989-90, Morningside High School, Calif.).
The 5-foot-11 junior guard led the Millers to a 25-4 record and the Class 4A state championship this past season. Shade averaged 20.9 points, 8.3 rebounds, 4.1 assists and 3.7 assists and tallied 31 points, seven rebounds, five assists and five steals in the team’s 76-52 win over Franklin Community High in the state title game. A two-time First Team All-State selection, she is ranked as the nation’s No. 3 recruit by ProspectsNation.com. She concluded her junior year with 1,698 points in her prep basketball career.
A state champion cross country runner in middle school, Shade has volunteered locally as a youth basketball coach and counselor. “Ashlynn can hurt you from the inside-out, which makes her very tough to guard,” said Erin Trimpe, head coach of Carmel High School. “Ashlynn finds ways to get to the rim, elevate over the defense and she can score at any level of the court.”
Shade has maintained a weighted 3.94 grade-point average in the classroom. She will begin her senior year of high school 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.
Shade joins recent Gatorade Indiana Girls Basketball Players of the Year Jessica Carrothers (2020-21, Crown Point High School), Madison Layden (2019-20, Northwestern High School), Sydney Parrish (2018-19, Hamilton Southeastern High School), and Amy Dilk (2017-18, Carmel 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 court. Through Gatorade’s “Play it Forward” platform, Shade 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. Shade 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 student-athletes, 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.