CHICAGO (May, 2020) — In its 35th year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, The Gatorade Company today announced Jay Woolfolk of Benedictine College Prep as its 2019-20 Gatorade Virginia Baseball Player of the Year. Woolfolk is the first Gatorade Virginia Baseball Player of the Year to be chosen from Benedictine College Prep.

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 Woolfolk as Virginia’s best high school baseball player.

Now a finalist for the prestigious Gatorade National Baseball Baseball Player of the Year award to be announced in May, Woolfolk joins an elite alumni association of state award-winners in 12 sports, including Derek Jeter (1991-92, Kalamazoo High School, Mich.), Jon Lester (2001-02, Bellarmine Preparatory School, Wash.), David Price (2003-04, Blackman High School, Tenn.), Clayton Kershaw (2005-06, Highland Park High School, Texas), Rick Porcello (2006-2007, Seaton Hall Preparatory School, N.J.) and Kris Bryant (2009-10, Bonanza High School, Nev.).

The 6-foot-1, 200-pound junior right-handed pitcher and outfielder earned All-Tournament honors at the WWBA 16U National Championships in July. Woolfolk went five innings, allowing two hits and recording seven strikeouts in his only start on the mound, and he posted a .529 batting average with six runs scored, nine RBI, a .652 on-base percentage and a .824 slugging percentage in seven games.

As a sophomore for Benedictine Prep, he was 6-0 on the mound with 58 strikeouts in 37.1 innings pitched, leading the Cadets to the 2019 Virginia Independent School Athletic Association Division I state title. He is ranked as the nation’s No. 35 prospect in the Class of 2021 by Baseball America.

Also the quarterback of Benedictine Prep’s 2019 state champion football team, Woolfolk has volunteered locally with the Salvation Army and Goodwill Industries International. “On the mound, it is just hard to believe that he can throw that hard,” said Tony Szymendera, head coach of St. Christopher’s School. “As he walks to the mound, he doesn’t look like he’s going to gas it up there at 90-plus. But then he does, repeatedly and effortlessly.”

Woolfolk has maintained a B average in the classroom. He has made a verbal commitment to play baseball and football on scholarship at the University of Virginia beginning in the fall of 2021.

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 and field, and awards one National Player of the Year in each sport. From the 12 national winners, one male and one female athlete are each named Gatorade High School Athlete of the Year. In all, 607 athletes are honored each year.

Woolfolk joins recent Gatorade Virginia Baseball Players of the Year Cade Hungate (2017-18, Abingdon High School), Andrew Abbott (2016-17, Halifax County High School), Khalil Lee (2015-16, Flint Hill School), and Nic Enright (2014-15, The Steward School), among the state’s list of former award winners.

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 www.Gatorade.com/POY, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/GatoradePOY or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Gatorade. ***