The following is a news release from Gatorade
In its 36th year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, Gatorade has announced Hunter Wohler of Muskego High School as its 2020-21 Gatorade Wisconsin Football Player of the Year.
Wohler is the second Gatorade Wisconsin Football Player of the Year to be chosen from Muskego 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 Wohler as Wisconsin’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, Wohler 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.).
Related: 20-21 Gatorade Football Player of the Year Finalists
The 6-foot-2, 195-pound senior safety led the Warriors to a 9-0 record and two victories in the Division 1, Sectional 2 playoffs this past season before pandemic concerns suspended the postseason. Wohler recorded 78 tackles, two interceptions, and one forced fumble while also rushing for 126 yards and two touchdowns on offense. The two-time Associated Press State Player of the Year, Wohler was also the 2019 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Player of the Year. He
concluded his prep football career with 355 tackles and 11 interceptions.
Wohler has volunteered locally as part of multiple community service initiatives through his church.
“Hunter was a force on the defensive side of the ball,” said Vince Sciano, head coach of Waukesha North High School. “He could cover sideline to sideline. Then he would come screaming down and make tackles at the line of scrimmage. He was an absolute monster.”
Wohler has maintained a weighted 4.29 GPA in the classroom. He has signed a National Letter of Intent to play football on scholarship at the University of Wisconsin 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.
Wohler joins recent Gatorade Wisconsin Football Players of the Year Alex Current (2019-20, Muskego High School), Leo Chenal (2018-19, Grantsburg High School), D.J. Stewart (2017-18, Kimberly High School), and Danny Vanden Boom (2016-17, Kimberly High School), among the state’s list of former award winners.
Through Gatorade’s cause marketing platform “Play it Forward,” Wohler has the opportunity to award a $1,000 grant to a local or national youth sports organization of their choosing. Wohler 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.
