By Victoria Ramirez | staff writer

Coming in first in districts, the Lady Jaguars 2016-2017 team might be the best yet adding to their accomplishments not one but two starters nominated for the McDonald’s All-American basketball games.

“The McDonald’s All-American award is an award that basically a committee nominates the best in all over America to play in a game against each other, which they call the best between the girls and the boys,” senior Alyssa Adams said.

While the two seniors, Alyssa Adams and Megan Valdez-Creader, are both already committed to two different schools, they both agree that this is an amazing nomination and feel proud to be sought out by an enormous organization.  

“It’s a great award, I am honored to be apart of the nominees and it is a good accomplishment to have,” Crader said.

For these players, the honor also marks just how far they have come as athletes.

“It means that I am making progress with myself, that I am getting to my goal, I’m improving and that I have been improving ever since the beginning, because they watch it like overall so that means I’ve been exceeding since they have been watching me,” Adams said.

To receive this award or any award takes a lot of hard work and dedication.  

“In the committee’s eyes you have to be a very dominant player, scoring a lot, have good leadership and be a good teammate,” Adams said. “My hard work and dedication has paid off because the committee thought and sought out to nominate me as one of the best in America.”

And while Adams and Crader were not selected to be on the team, their teammates and coaches know the significance of the nomination.

“I think hard work is not necessarily a perfect, like correlation, to their success but it is definitely huge in their influencing them, I think to be that caliber of a player you definitely have to put in work, it takes talent which is god given but it also takes skill which that come from their work and dedication, putting in a lot of hours in the gym,” varsity head coach Stephanie Desmarais said. “I’m very excited, they are both very hard workers and it is just one of those things that really shows that their hard work has paid off and they are also very talented and very skilled players and it is just nice to see them get recognized for that.”