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American Fork senior Evan Young drives to the basket during the 6A state championship game against Corner Canyon at the Marriott Center in Provo on Saturday, March 5, 2022. (Jared Lloyd, Daily Herald)

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American Fork senior Evan Young celebrates after winning the 6A state championship game against Corner Canyon at the Marriott Center in Provo on Saturday, March 5, 2022. (Jared Lloyd, Daily Herald)

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American Fork senior Evan Young goes up for a layup during the 6A state championship game against Corner Canyon at the Marriott Center in Provo on Saturday, March 5, 2022. (Jared Lloyd, Daily Herald)

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American Fork senior Evan Young goes up for a layup during the 6A semifinal game against Pleasant Grove at the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City on Thursday, March 3, 2022. (Jared Lloyd, Daily Herald)

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American Fork's Evan Young holds off Syracuse's Kaden Ericksen during the teams' 6A boys basketball state quarterfinal Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at the University of Utah. (Patrick Carr, Standard-Examiner)

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Need someone to draw a charge?

How about someone to give up the ball on the break to teammate with a better look? Set a screen? D up the opponent’s best player? Hit a big shot?

Evan Young of American Fork is your man.

American Fork, the No. 10 seed heading into the Class 6A tournament, shot all the way to the top, beating Corner Canyon 43-39 in the title game in the Marriott Center.

They did it with Young — a 5-foot-11 point guard — and his teammates who were also willing to do whatever it took to get that championship hardware.

“I love it,” Young said. “Every night it’s somebody else. If you have a bad game you could just say, ‘It’s not my night, it’s somebody else’s night.’ We were so balanced and you didn’t have to be the guy every night. But there are nights you had to be.”

Young big-game contributions and leadership gave the Daily Herald plenty of reason to choose him as the 2022 Utah Valley Boys Basketball Player of the Year.

Young’s final totals are modest – 9.8 points per game, 42 3-pointers and a team-leading 47 steals. But those numbers barely scratch the surface of just how important Young was to the Cavemen this year.

“A lot of things he was able to do for us were behind the scenes, things people don’t see,” American Fork coach Ryan Cuff said. “No. 1, he got our defense going and that was contagious. He helped others around him play great. Evan is kind of feisty and he brought the havoc every day in practice. He brought the guys up to his level. His energy was really valuable for us. Evan was one of our captains and he was named a captain for many different reasons. We wouldn’t have won the championship without him. We needed his toughness and stability.”

Young said he started playing basketball in second grade, tagging along with his father to church ball games.

“My passion started there,” Young said.

He began going onto the court between games and struggled to get the ball over the rim, but remembers the first time it went through the basket.

He was hooked.

Young played Junior Jazz and then his freshman year at Lone Peak before transferring to American Fork. The Cavemen finished the 2021 season in the 6A semifinals and returned plenty of talent, including 6-foot-8 Michigan State commit Jaxon Kohler. But Kohler decided to transfer to a prep school in California for his senior season. In the meantime, Cuff had already set up the toughest schedule in the state that included games against several nationally ranked out-of-state teams.

“Jaxon was really a big part of the program,” Young said. “When he left it opened up a lot of opportunities for me and other people. When he was here, the game plan was to get the ball to Jaxon. I feel like our ball movement was a million times better this year. Our ball movement and team unity was really in sync and our hard schedule really prepared us for the end of the year.”

After a 59-55 loss to Corner Canyon on Feb. 4, American Fork fell to 7-12.

“Our coaches were really mad at us,” Young said. “They threw us out the locker room. We had a team huddle without the coaches, just talking. We said we were not going to let this happen again. This is our year. We were going to take state and give it our all. The amount that things changed after that game, it was crazy and cool to watch. Our defense was just unbelievable after that game.”

The Cavemen wouldn’t lose again. Young and his teammates ran off a nine-game winning streak all the way to the top of Class 6A.

Young had plenty of help. Football star Noah Moeaki missed the first seven games of the season due to injury but led AF in scoring with 12 points per game. Junior Ashton Wallace slashed his way to the basket against whatever defense was thrown at him. Yaw Reneer was one of the state’s elite defenders and Adam Rawson was a perfect glue guy. Big Aaron Dunne (6-9) played his role and so did Ollie Anderson, Jared Shepherd and Tiger Cuff off the bench.

When the championship was secured against that same Corner Canyon team in the final, Young pulled himself up onto the rim and stood on the north basket of the Marriott Center to celebrate.

There was a reason for it: Timpview won a state basketball title in the Marriott Center in 1989, the last time a high school state tournament was played in that building. One of the T-Bird players was Chris Young, Evan’s dad, and he pulled himself up onto the rim in the same way.

Evan Young is still deciding where his future will take him. He said he has an offer to be a walk-on at Washington State and is being courted by Santiago Canyon College in California. He is looking at those two offers or perhaps serving a church mission.

He said he won’t soon forget the challenge of his high school senior season.

“We just kept pushing,” he said. “I feel like when we were most discouraged, that’s when we became the closest. The tough schedule and the tough times created opportunities for us to become closer. That’s where the real bond set. No one was being broken because we’d already been through the hardest times of season. We were at the bottom and we rose to the top.”