Story provided by Stillwater Public Schools
In its 36th year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, Gatorade today announced Tevin Williams of Stillwater High School as its 2020-21 Gatorade Oklahoma Boys Track & Field Player of the Year. Williams is the first Gatorade Oklahoma Boys Track & Field Player of the Year to be chosen from Stillwater 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 Williams as Oklahoma’s best high school boys track & field athlete. Now a finalist for the prestigious Gatorade National Boys Track & Field Player of the Year award to be announced in July, Williams joins an elite alumni association of state award-winners in 12 sports, including Lolo Jones (1997-98, Roosevelt High School, Iowa), Allyson Felix (2002-03, Los Angeles Baptist High School, Calif.), Robert Griffin III (2006-07, Copperas Cove High School, Texas), Grant Fisher (2013-14 & 2014-15, Grand Blanc High School, Mich.) and Candace Hill (2014-15, Rockdale County High School, Ga.).
The 6-foot-1, 175-pound senior raced to victories in both the 100- and the 200-meter dash at the Class 6A state meet this past season. Williams won the 100 in 10.20 seconds, which ranked as the nation’s No. 8 all-conditions performance among 2021 prep competitors. His winning time of 20.92 in the 200 ranked No. 16.
Williams has volunteered locally with his church youth group. “Tevin is very goal-oriented, with a rational, driven mindset,” said Stillwater coach Rusty Atkins. “He’s a true ‘team player,’ very humble and always willing to work with others.”
Williams has maintained a 3.97 GPA in the classroom. He has signed a National Letter of Intent to compete in football and track and field on scholarship at Baylor 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 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.
Williams joins recent Gatorade Oklahoma Boys Track & Field Players of the Year Bobby Wood (2019-20, Putnam City High School), J.T. McCloud (2018-19, Union High School), Patrick Larrison (2017-18, Moore High School), and Vernon Turner (2016-17, Yukon High School), among the state’s list of former award winners.
Through Gatorade’s cause marketing platform “Play it Forward,” Williams has the opportunity to award a $1,000 grant to a local or national youth sports organization of their choosing. Williams 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.
To learn more about the Gatorade Player of the Year program, check out past winners or to nominate student-athletes, visit playeroftheyear.gatorade.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/GatoradePOY or follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/Gatorade.
