NEW ORLEANS – Kelsey Major, a state champion soccer player from St. Mary’s Dominican High School, and Jaylee Womack, a state champion basketball player from Ponchatoula High School, have been selected as the co-winners of February’s Greater New Orleans Amateur Athlete of the Month honor. Monthly award-winners are selected by the Greater New Orleans Sports Awards Committee, sponsored by the Allstate Sugar Bowl.
Greater New Orleans Amateur Athletes of the Month
Major led Dominican to the LHSAA Division I girls’ soccer state championship in February. The team’s leading scorer with 37 goals and 20 assists, Major scored a goal in the 3-1 title-game victory over St. Joseph’s and was selected as the championship match’s outstanding player. For the season, Major scored 38 goals to lead her team for the second straight year. As a junior, Major was named Louisiana’s Gatorade Player of the Year in both cross country and soccer – making her the first boy or girl from Louisiana to be named the Gatorade Player of the Year in more than one sport in the same school year. She has signed to play soccer at LSU in the fall.
Womack, meanwhile, was simply dominant in leading Ponchatoula to a perfect 7-0 record in February. In those seven games, she averaged 32.7 points, 7.4 rebounds, 3.4 steals and 3.1 assists per game. She connected on 55.6 percent of her shots from the field and 92.7 percent (24-of-26) of her free throws (92.7%). She had a high mark of 42 points in a playoff win over Sam Houston and also a 38-point effort in a victory over Fontainebleau. She added four other 30-point games and a pair of double-doubles. Her February efforts were capped by a victory over Ruston in the LHSAA Class 5A state quarterfinals on Feb. 24 to launch the Green Wave into the state semifinals for the third straight year. However, after suffering losses the last two years, this year, Ponchatoula rode Womack to a semifinal victory over top-seeded Walker and a championship win in overtime against No. 2 Parkway. Womack has signed to play basketball at Tulane.
The February co-winners were selected over four other standout athletes:
Santiago Perez, a senior for Xavier University of Louisiana’s men’s tennis team, helped his team win three dual matches against top-15 NAIA opponents, all on the road, in the final 11 days of February. The senior from Pereira, Colombia, went 7-0 in singles, 4-0 in doubles during the month. On Feb. 20 at Georgia Gwinnett, seven-time defending NAIA national champion, he defeated Matthias Haim, a first-team NAIA All-American and the most outstanding player of NAIA nationals in 2021 on Haim’s home court. On Feb. 28 at William Carey, ranked seventh in the NAIA, Perez and Juan Ramirez clinched the doubles point with a 6-3 victory and then ended the dual on the first singles court when he rallied to defeat Daniil Klimov — No. 3 in the ITA NAIA rankings — 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (13-11).
Glenn Price won his fourth straight LHSAA wrestling state championship in February as he took the 120-pound title in Division II to help Archbishop Shaw to a second-place finish – its best since 2015. In addition to being the first freshman in school history to win a state title in 2019, he has posted a career-mark of 164-13 (92.6%), including a streak of 63 consecutive wins. An NHCSA All-American, he also excels in the classroom with a 4.2 grade-point average.
On February 19, Zac Rambeau of Brother Martin High School broke bench-press records for both the South Regional and the Division 1 State Championship in the 132-pound weight class. The 130-pounder bench presses 305 pounds. He also went on to win the Louisiana High School Power Lifting Association’s South Regional Championship in the 132-pound weight class with total weight of 1,170 pounds (Squat: 445 lbs., Bench Press: 305 lbs, Deadlift: 420 lbs.).
In eight games in February, Moon Ursin, a senior transfer from Baylor by way of Destrehan High School, averaged 13.9 points, 7.1 rebounds and 3.5 assists to lead the Tulane women’s basketball team to a perfect 8-0 to reach 20 wins for the season. That locked up a third-place finish in the American Athletic Conference. Ursin had three games of 18 points, including a road victory over preseason conference favorite South Florida on Feb. 6. For the season, Ursin led Tulane in scoring (13.7), rebounding (8.6) and assists (3.6).
The Greater New Orleans Sports Awards Committee has been selecting an Amateur Athlete of the Month each month since 1957. The athlete must be a native of the greater New Orleans area or must compete for a team in the metropolitan region in order to be eligible.
Recent Greater New Orleans Amateur Athletes of the Month:
2022
February Kelsey Major Soccer Dominican High School
Jaylee Womack Basketball Ponchatoula High School
January Derek St. Hilaire Basketball University of New Orleans
2021
December Kyle Cannon Football St. Charles Catholic High School
November Kate Baker Volleyball Dominican High School
October Dai’Jean Dixon Football Nicholls State University
September Brian Jenkins Football Pearl River High School
August Christian Westcott Baseball New Orleans Boosters
July William Good Baseball Retif Oil Legion
June Raven Nunnery Track John Curtis Christian School
May Zack Casebonne Baseball Jesuit High School
April Jared Butler Basketball Baylor University
March Stafford Agee Powerlifting Holy Cross High School
The Allstate Sugar Bowl has established itself as one of the premier college football bowl games, having hosted 28 national champions, 100 Hall of Fame players, 51 Hall of Fame coaches and 20 Heisman Trophy winners in its 88-year history. In addition to football, the Sugar Bowl Committee annually invests over $1 million into the community through the hosting and sponsorship of sporting events, awards, scholarships and clinics. Through these efforts, the organization supports and honors thousands of student-athletes each year, while injecting over $2.2 billion into the local economy in the last decade. For more information, visit www.AllstateSugarBowl.org.
{Courtesy: release from the Allstate Sugar Bowl}