Miami High’s Joelle Wilson is Miami-Dade Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year for 7A-5A

David Wilson
·2 min read

Two things are typically true of the Miami High girls’ basketball team each season: It makes at least the final four and its best player reels in awards.

It was true again of Miami High and Joelle Wilson this year. After leading the Stingarees to another state semifinal, Wilson is the Miami Herald’s Miami-Dade County Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year for Classes 7A-5A.

Wilson is the third different Stingaree to be a Miami-Dade County Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year in the last four seasons and she took the Stingarees a sixth straight final four before Miami High ultimately came up short with a 40-31 loss to Orlando Dr. Phillips in the Class 7A semifinals last month in Lakeland.

The senior was the ideal avatar for the Stingarees’ signature grind-it-out, defensive-minded style of play. The 5-foot-11 forward averaged 16.3 points, 8.0 rebounds and 2.0 steals per game to give Miami High enough offense to go with its always-stout defense. Her points per game jumped by more than eight after she was only the Stingarees’ third leading scorer as a junior.

Miami High’s Joelle Wilson is the Miami Herald’s Class 7A-5A Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year.
Miami High’s Joelle Wilson is the Miami Herald’s Class 7A-5A Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year.

“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,” coach Sam Baumgarten said. “She embraced that role in the sense where she put more time in and work in this summer, and I think that was the big thing.”

A two-sport athlete, Wilson often spent her summers focusing on getting ready for girls’ volleyball season, but she spent more time on basketball last year, knowing Miami High would need her to be more than just a role player.

After the Stingarees ran everything through their point guard during the 2021-22 season, they changed their identity to play to Wilson’s strengths and once again got to the final weekend of the season.

“Whatever it takes to try to get the dub, that’s what we’re going to do,” Baumgarten said. “She had the ball in her hands a lot more, she got more reps, she got more touches.”