Following up on a memorable fall, Sprouts, in partnership with the AIA, will be awarding a $500 gift card to its "Team of the Season" for this past winter sports season. Voting will take place this Wednesday through Friday on the AZPreps365 Live app, which is free in the Apple app store and Google Play.

The four finalists – Basha girls wrestling, Campo Verde girls soccer, Page girls basketball and Valley Vista girls basketball – were selected by the AZPreps365 writers based on overall performance, overcoming obstacles, community involvement and other intangibles that made this a memorable season.

Fans must download and register the app to vote. Voting will take place from Wednesday at 10 a.m. until Friday at 5 p.m. The winning team will be announced on the AZPreps365 Saturday morning show this Saturday, May 8, between 8-10 a.m. The nominees are below.

Basha girls wrestling
The AIA started holding individual competition for girls wrestling in the winter of 2018-2019. Ten wrestlers earned the first-ever high school state championships handed out that year, and then 10 more state championships were earned the next year. Then, in April of 2020, the Executive Board of the AIA voted to turn the “emerging sport” into a sanctioned sport where girls could also win a team championship.

Basha, coached by Michael Garcia, beat Liberty and Winslow 191 to 108 last winter and history was made. Two hundred twenty-four wrestlers competed in the various sectional tournaments in 2018 and that number jumped to 435 the following year, but the pandemic decreased the number of schools competing and that translated into fewer athletes in almost every sport including girls wrestling. Plus, the weight classes increased from 10 to 14 making a state team championship even more impressive due to the number of athletes in would take to score points in a decreased pool.

Still, the Bears qualified the full number of athletes at 14 with nine earning medals - one third place finisher, two runner-up finishers and three state champions in Trinity Howard (120), Amber Rodriguez (145) and Trinity Bouchal (170).

It was a breakthrough for all the female athletes from all the teams, but to be the first team to win a team championship in a new sport is not only amazing, it’s something can never be taken away and will never be repeated.

Campo Verde girls soccer
Campo Verde girls soccer produced another solid season, finishing 17-1 with a 5A championship. In fact, it was their second state title in three years. What stood out was who the Coyotes defeated in the championship game. Campo Verde was the No. 2 seed, and faced No. 1 seed Casteel for the title. A No. 2 beating a No. 1 is not a huge upset, but this one came with a couple of twists.

Campo Verde beat Casteel in the title match, 2-1. That dethroned the 2020 champs. Notably, too, it was Campo Verde's first varsity win ever over Casteel in girls soccer. Three previous matches - one each in 2019, 2020 and 2021 - had gone Casteel's way. Two of those three matchups cost the Coyotes region titles. Casteel, which finished 16-1, delivered 13 of its wins in 2021 via shutout and had outscored opponents heading to the final, 79-3. Campo Verde was the only team to score two goals against the Colts in 2021.

Page girls basketball
Since AIA girls basketball re-branded back to conferences from divisions in 2017, one 3A team has always been there in the end: Page High School. The girls basketball championship this season was Page's third in that five-year span.

It was a championship, and a season, that almost never happened until a petition was signed to allow Navajo Nation players to participate on the team. All Navajo high school winter sports had been cancelled, despite the AIA reversing that cancellation for the remainder of the state's teams and reinstating girls and boys basketball, soccer and wrestling.

In the state semifinal in its own gym, Page was down five to Thatcher High School with 14.5 seconds to play. Even some of the Sand Devil fans had begun to leave, senior Neve Redhair recalled. Off the inbounds, though, 3A Player of the Year Miquedah Taliman hit a three-point shot, and Page successfully stole the ball off its subsequent full-court press. With four seconds to play, Torrance Begay, the conference's Offensive Player of the Year, hit a jumper in the lane to force overtime.

Redhair scored the first four points in the extra period, and the Sand Devils went on to the seven-point win. They would hold off Snowflake High School, 36-32, in the championship game in Mesa.

Valley Vista girls basketball
They weren't just Valley Vista's best basketball players, but Marisa Davis and Jennah Isai were also two of the top players in the nation in their respective graduating class. But before the season started, Davis, a senior, and Isai, a junior, decided to leave Valley Vista to attend in-state prep schools. After some soul searching, Davis and Isai returned to the Monsoon. But new challenges awaited. An injury during the season forced Isai to sit the rest of the campaign.

Valley Vista wound up losing a game to Hamilton in the regular season. In the playoffs, Hamilton, the No. 1 seed in the 6A state tournament, wound up meeting Valley Vista in the state championship game. Thanks in part to Davis' game-high 21 points and 12 boards, Valley Vista won that battle 49-41 and took home its second title in a row, and fourth in five years.

That loss to Hamilton was Valley Vista’s only blemish on the season. The team also tallied eight victories over other postseason-bound teams, including 5A champion Millennium.