Results are in. Voters tab Cypress Bay soccer player as Broward winter athlete of the year

Maddy Brouse took the long road to becoming a starter on the Cypress Bay girls’ soccer team.

Brouse was a starter for the Lightning for the first time after two years on the junior varsity team and a season she spent as a reserve who didn’t play.

She also went from exclusively playing as a defensive midfielder or center back to striker for Cypress Bay after the Lightning graduated all three of their starting forwards from last season’s team.

The result, though, was a senior season in which she scored 12 goals and tallied seven assists after returning from an early-season ankle injury to lead the Lightning to a state runner-up finish in Class 7A.

Miami Herald readers voted Brouse as the Miami Herald’s Winter Athlete of the Year for Broward County this week.

“It was just funny,” Brouse said earlier this year. “In the beginning, it was hilarious because we had no idea what we were doing, but it definitely got more fun as we actually understood what we were doing.”

Brouse’s versatility paid off during Cypress Bay’s playoff run, which included wins over Cooper City (2-0), Stoneman Douglas (6-0), Palmetto (2-1) and Boca Raton (3-0) before that title-game loss to St. Johns Creekside.

About 4,500 people voted in the poll, which included all 10 players from Broward County who were named player of the year in either basketball, soccer or wrestling by the Miami Herald this year. Brouse received 59 percent of the vote, with North Broward Prep girls’ soccer’s Leah Finkelman (24 percent) and Cypress Bay boys’ soccer’s Giancarlo Dostillo (16 percent) rounding out the top three.

The Miami Herald will select its overall Athletes of the Year and reveal those winners in June. The results from this poll will not have a bearing on those selections.

This story was originally published May 18, 2022 at 7:30 PM.