Awards Banquet Photos & Swimming Report

By Leopard Nation · Published March 26, 2011 · Updated March 26, 2011

BANQUET PHOTOS

Below are photos from Tuesday’s Winter Sports Awards Banquet taken by Jim Campbell. Most of them are of the swim team, however several other Winter Sports Athletes are pictured as well.

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Swimming Awards

By Jim Campbell

First year swim coach, Michael Jones recapped the 2010 – 2011 swim season and outlined his goals for the future at the Winter Awards Night on March 22, 2011. Coach Jones told the audience he felt the swimmers adjusted to his coaching philosophy and have built a foundation for a successful swim program. While the swim teams posted a great dual meet record, his goal is to qualify as many swimmers as possible to the year-end District and State swim meets. In order to achieve the goal of qualifying swimmers to the elite meets, swimmers will swim tired though out the year as they build strength, speed and endurance though his weight lifting and practice routines. Swimmers who focused on this long term goal and worked hard during the season saw their times improve and had great results at the end of the year. Eight swimmers and two relay teams qualified to the District swim meet this year and four individual swimmers and six relay teams finish the year on the Top Ten Stark County Swim Time List.

For the awards portion of the evening, Coach Jones recognized his assistant coach, Lindsay Fuller for all her efforts as well as the army of volunteers necessary to run the swim program. He awarded twenty-two varsity letters including three, to up and coming freshmen; Ashley Brookens, Angela Godwin and Caleb Walters. He also selected Stephanie Brookens as the Girls Team MVP, Marissa Jones received the Coach’s Award and Stephanie Horton was named the Most Improved Swimmer. For the Boy’s team, Coach Jones selected Matt Campbell as team MVP, Scott Valentine for the Coach’s Award and Brad Chapman was named the Most Improved Swimmer. Coach Jones noted the difficulty he had in selecting a few swimmers to recognize as all the swimmers on the team had an outstanding year and showed great improvement throughout the year.

To conclude the evening, Coach Jones asked each swimmer to keep building on their success and join him for the upcoming swim clinics, the YMCA summer swim team and his summer weight lifting program. With twelve graduating seniors this year, he also requested each swimmer to actively recruit athletes for next year’s team; particularly the boys.