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Half-hearted acceptance just wasn't going to do.

Everyone needed to buy in for it to work.

And that started with the player who stood the most to lose in terms of traditional thoughts about playing time.

But senior Taylor Moeaki was completely on board, even when her coach started to waver.

"There was a couple of times during the season where I was ready to pull the plug on our system," Cavemen coach Corey Clayton said. "And she was like, 'No coach, we have to stick with it.'

"Coming from a player like her — I mean, she'd be on the floor all the time in a traditional system — she was just so unselfish that way."

Persistence paid off when American Fork beat Viewmont 50-46 in the Class 5A state title game, and Moeaki is the Tribune Player of the Year in girls' basketball.

The Cavemen, applying pressure defense and a full-throttle offensive attack, often appeared like a hockey team doing complete line changes. And Moeaki was part of those 5-for-5 en masse substitutions.

"The thing that's amazing about her is that when we made the change to go to a platoon system, she comes out from the floor every minute-and-a-half to rest for a minute," Clayton said. "You would think that a player with her caliber of skills would be upset about that, would be like, 'I want to be on the floor all the time.'

"She really realized that, in order for our team to be as good as it could be, that she was really going to have to sacrifice some floor time."

Moeaki got her numbers — 18.6 points per game — although she averaged only about 16 minutes per game. She plans to continue her career at Dixie State.

The 5-foot-6 Moeaki — "5-7 on the roster," she says with a laugh — emerged as a leader on the court from the start of her high school career. She remembers her freshman and sophomore seasons playing alongside her older sister Alexis, and Taylor was the leading scorer.

"The girls just love having her as a teammate," Clayton said. "She wants to take the game-winning shot. She's not afraid to be the hero and she's also not afraid to be the goat — and she's been that way since she was a freshman."

She was just as effective as a leader off the court as one of nine seniors on the American Fork roster this season.

"We've all been together since freshman year, this group," she said. "We're all so close and best friends off the court," Moeaki said. "Another great thing about our team — something I hear about with other teams because I have a lot of friends at other schools — is I hear about team drama, that kind of stuff.

"But we're all so chill and it's never been a problem. And that's so nice." —

About Taylor Moeaki

School • American Fork

Class • Senior

Position • Guard

Height • 5 foot 6

Past winners

The Tribune began naming one Player of the Year in 2014. The previous winners:

2016 • Hailey Bassett, Layton

2015 • Lindsey Jensen, Sky View

2014 • Kailie Quinn, Judge Memorial