Central Kentucky runner named state’s top girls cross country athlete
Woodford County’s Addison Moore has been named Kentucky’s Gatorade Girls Cross Country Player of the Year, the nationwide program announced Monday.
Moore, a 5-foot-3 sophomore, won last season’s Class 3A state cross country championship with a time of 18:12.5, the best time among all three of Kentucky’s classes in 2023. She went on to finish 24th at the Foot Locker South Region championships and eighth at the national RunningLane Championships for which she earned All-America honors.
Her personal best of 17:20.8 in a win at the Trinity/Valkyrie Invitational last season is the fourth-fastest 5K cross country time in history by a Kentucky girls high school runner, Gatorade said.
This is Gatorade’s 39th year of honoring elite athletes from all 50 states and the District of Columbia in a number of varsity sports. The awards celebrate high school athletes for excellence on the field, in the classroom and in the community.
Moore has maintained a 4.0 GPA and has been recognized as a scholar student-athlete by the Woodford County Board of Education. She volunteers for her church, Southland Christian in Nicholasville, and the Catholic Action Center in Lexington, and she is a member of her school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter. Moore has also donated her time as an assistant running coach for Huntertown Elementary School in Versailles.
So far this school year, Gatorade has named Christian Academy-Louisville’s Cole Hodge its football player of the year and Covington Holy Cross’s Julia Hunt its volleyball player of the year.
Moore is the first Woodford County girls cross country athlete to be named a Gatorade player of the year and the second to win a state title. She joined Holly Straight, who won the Class 2A title in 1975, the first year the Kentucky High School Athletic Association sponsored girls championships.
