Meet The Observer’s best boys’ athletes, teams, coaches of the 2025-26 school year
One coach, two players and one team have been recognized by The Charlotte Observer as the best in boys’ high school sports for the 2025-26 school year.
Each June, The Observer honors the best area performers of the school year. These awards for boys’ sports are in addition to seasonal teams named in fall, winter and spring.
Here are this year’s winners.
Coach of the year: DeShawn Baker, Hough
It’s not easy to take over a powerhouse, much less elevate one.
In three seasons, Hough football coach DeShawn Baker has taken one of the state’s top programs and made it elite. Baker led the Huskies to their first state championship game and first state title in December.
In its championship run, Hough gave up 17 total points in four playoff games. That included shutting out nationally ranked West Charlotte in the semifinals and shutting out previously unbeaten Millbrook in the final round.
This coming season, Hough is a favorite to repeat. And Baker, with a 37-4 record at the school, has not lost a conference game.
Player of the year: Jaxon Dollar, East Lincoln
Dollar may be the best athlete in North Carolina.
A Georgia recruit in football and an all-state player in basketball, Dollar has a rare form of athleticism and size that has drawn comparisons to NFL Hall of Famer Julius Peppers, a former N.C. high school star.
In football last season, Dollar was a first-team All-Charlotte Observer pick as a 6-foot-6, 225-pound tight end.
The state’s No. 1 player in the junior class, Dollar caught 54 passes for 1,190 yards and 20 touchdowns. He was a semifinalist for the state player of the year award, N.C. Mr. Football.
And he was just as good in basketball.
Dollar averaged 21 points, 10.3 rebounds, 6.3 assists, 3.2 steals and 1.6 blocks for the Mustangs. He was a first-team All-Charlotte Observer pick.
Team of the year: Providence Day football
Providence Day won its fourth state title in five years and changed what’s possible for private school football teams.
The Chargers won their third Charlotte Observer Sweet 16 banner in the past four years, and finished in the top 25 in several national polls, higher than any team from the Carolinas.
In November, Providence Day beat Charlotte Christian, 42-6, in the 2025 state championship game.
Before Providence Day’s run, only two NCISAA private schools had won the Sweet 16 title — Charlotte Christian in 2018 and Charlotte Latin in 2007 — and none had ever consistently been on the level of the Carolinas’ best public school teams.
The Chargers have changed all of that.
Comeback athlete of the year: Cooper Sugg, Providence
Sugg was getting ready for the 2025 high school football season when he suffered a serious injury during a 7-on-7 camp in the summer of 2025.
He suffered multiple vertebrae fractures in his neck and upper back that left him immobilized for about 20 hours.
After a nearly five-month recovery, one that forced to miss his junior football season, Sugg recovered enough to participate on the Panthers’ track team. He threw shot put and discus and qualified for the N.C. 8A state championship.
Scholar-athlete of the year: Reed Rhodes, Hickory Grove
Rhodes, who has a 4.62 GPA, is a National Merit Commended Scholar who won a full academic/service scholarship to N.C. State via its Goodnight Scholarship award.
Rhodes is in the National Honor Society, the National English Honor Society and the Science National Honor Society. He was captain of the Lions’ football team, helping a senior class set a record for the most wins in school history by any class.
Rhodes won two conference championships in track and was named his school’s male athlete and academic male athlete of the year.
