Miami High’s Joelle Wilson is the Herald’s Miami-Dade Girls’ Scholar-Athlete of the Year
Many saw Joelle Wilson’s hard work on the basketball and volleyball courts for four years at Miami High.
But after Wilson was done banging bodies in the paint or spiking volleyballs over the net, it was her parents and coaches who saw the dedication she showed in the classroom to ensure she’d have a quality college opportunity.
Wilson’s accomplishments, which range from being named Miami-Dade County’s basketball Player of the Year to maintaining a 4.41 grade point average, scoring a 1430 on the SAT, and earning an academic scholarship to the University of Miami is why she is the Miami Herald’s Girls’ Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
“It’s definitely something me and my parents and coaches have been working for so it’s very exciting and I am proud and grateful for it,” Wilson said.
Wilson, a 5-foot-11 forward who averaged 16.3 points, eight rebounds and two steals per game this past season, led the Stingarees back to the state final four this past March and became the fourth player from her school in the past five seasons to earn Player of the Year honors.
Wilson also earned second team All-Dade honors on Miami High’s volleyball team, which had a breakthrough season, winning 21 matches and earning a trip to the regional quarterfinals.
“She’s going to do whatever it takes to make sure that the team is winning, so if her role in the past was to be just that rebounder, defender, so on and so on, she took on that role, embraced that role, but this year she knew was the best player,” Miami High coach Sam Baumgarten told the Herald back in March. “She embraced that role in the sense where she put more time and work in this summer, and I think that was the big thing.”
But Wilson’s proudest accomplishment was balancing that and getting the chance to go to the school where her father went to graduate school.
Wilson is planning to study biomedical engineering and wants to follow a career path in one of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. Wilson was a UM Ronald A. Hammond Scholar and a Bright Futures Florida Academic Scholar.
“I’ve been talking a lot to (former Miami High teammate) Cameron Araujo, who is attending UM, and she’s been mentoring me through the enrollment process,” Wilson said. “I’m really excited for what’s next.”
