Ocean Springs High Cross Country’s Addison Rainey wins Gatorade Player of the Year

The Gatorade Mississippi Girls Cross County Player of the Year Award is staying on the Gulf Coast.

Today, Ocean Springs Sophomore Standout Addison Rainey took home the honors following the four-year run of former News 25 Student Athlete of the Week Brooklyn Biancamano.

This season, the 5’4” speedster racing her way to the 6A individual state championship with a 5K time of 19 minutes 10 seconds.

Her efforts also lead the Greyhounds to the state crown as a team and she maintains a 4.26 weighted GPA in the classroom.

Not too shabby for someone that just picked up the sport less than two years ago. Rainey said, “I’ve been working really hard for this. I mean I started running my freshman year, so I didn’t really think anything like this could happen. But when they first told me that I got nominated for it, I was like, what? This is crazy. But I did a lot of volunteer work for it and I kept my grades up, and I just – I don’t know – it means a lot to think that I did so much work for it and it paid off.”

Ocean Springs Head Cross County Tim Sayers said, “When the gun goes off, she performs, and that’s all you can really ask out of anybody is work hard, prepare and then when it’s time to go, perform like you’re capable of and she does it better than anybody almost.”

Rainey is the first Ocean Springs student-athlete to win Gatorade Player of the Year for girls cross country.

Addison is the younger sister of Ashton Rainey, who just signed to run cross country with Lamar University yesterday morning.