The following is a news release from Gatorade
In its 36th year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, Gatorade has
announced Jaxson Dart of Corner Canyon High School as its 2020-21 Gatorade Utah Football Player of the Year. Dart is the second Gatorade Utah Football Player of the Year to be chosen from Corner Canyon 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 Dart as Utah’s best high school football player. Now a finalist for the prestigious Gatorade National Football Player of the Year award to be announced in May, Dart joins an elite group of past state football award-winners, including Emmitt Smith (1986-87, Escambia High School, Fla.), Matthew Stafford (2005-06, Highland Park High School, Texas) and Christian McCaffrey (2012-13 & 2013-14, Valor Christian High School, Colo.).
The 6-foot-3, 215-pound senior quarterback passed for 4,691 yards and 67 touchdowns this past season, leading the Chargers to a 14-0 record and the Class 6A state championship. Dart completed 240 of 345 passes, throwing just four interceptions, while also rushing for 1,195 yards and 12 TDs on 128 carries. The MaxPreps National Player of the Year, he was also selected Mr. Football by the Deseret News. Dart was ranked as the nation’s No. 19 recruit in the Class of 2021 by ESPN.
Dart has assisted elderly members of his community and has volunteered locally on behalf of a food bank and clothing donation drives. “Jaxson Dart is one of the most dominant players I’ve seen in 30 years coaching at the high school level,” said Louis Wong, head coach at Westlake High School. “He’s a cool customer who can completely take over a game with his arm strength and accuracy. He’s also dangerous when he leaves the pocket and improvises.”
Dart has maintained a 3.98 GPA in the classroom. He has signed a National Letter of Intent to play football on scholarship at the University of Southern California 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 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.
Dart joins recent Gatorade Utah Football Players of the Year Cole Hagen (2019-20, Corner Canyon High School), Puka Nacua (2018-19, Orem High School), Cammon Cooper (2017-18, Lehi High School), and Joshua Davis (2016-17, Alta High School), among the state’s list of former award winners.
Through Gatorade’s cause marketing platform “Play it Forward,” Dart has the opportunity to award a $1,000 grant to a local or national youth sports organization of their choosing. Dart is also eligible to submit a 30-second 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 $2.7 million across 1,117 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.
