CHICAGO — In its 27th year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, The Gatorade Company, in collaboration with ESPNHS, has announced Lexi Davis of Porter Ridge High School as its 2011-12 Gatorade North Carolina Softball Player of the Year. Davis is the first Gatorade Softball Player of the Year to be chosen from Porter Ridge 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 Davis as North Carolina’s best high school softball player.

The 6-foot-1 senior right-handed pitcher led the Pirates (33-1) to the NCHSAA 4A state championship this past season and a No. 2 ranking nationally in the ESPNHS Fab 50. Davis posted a 33-1 record with a 0.23 ERA in the circle, and batted .450 with eight home runs and 42 RBI at the plate. She’s a three-time Conference Player of the Year and three-time First Team All-State selection.

Davis has maintained a 3.89 GPA in the classroom. An elementary school tutor, she has volunteered locally on behalf of the Special Olympics and youth softball programs.

“Lexi Davis has been a dominant softball player for the last four years,” said Don Mather, head coach at Parkwood High. “This season she’s just outdone herself, in both hitting and pitching.”

Davis has signed a National Letter of Intent to play softball on scholarship at Auburn University.

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 ESPNHS and the Gatorade high school sports leadership team, which work with top sport-specific experts and a media advisory board of accomplished, veteran prep sports journalists to determine the state winners in each sport.

Davis joins recent Gatorade North Carolina Softball Players of the Year Chelsea Wilkinson (2009-10 & 2010-11, Alexander Central High School), Tisha Mahon (2008-09, North Davidson) and Chelsea Leonard (2007-08, Central Davidson) among the state’s list of former award winners.

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