Coconino’s Woodlyn Smith and Northland Prep’s Jacob Marquez took home the pinnacle honors at the second annual 2019 Champions of the Mountain, and everyone has been presented a $1,000 scholarship.
The night, hosted through the Flagstaff Sports Institute, collectively introduced the athletic groups from 3 neighborhood high colleges, Flagstaff High School, Coconino High, and Northland Prep Academy, to honor Flagstaff’s best multi-recreation athletes. Finalists were selected based totally on their fantastic athletic accomplishments, individual, leadership, and community careers.
Ten graduating senior multi-sport athletes were venerated at this yr’s rite, $three 000 in scholarships have been awarded overall, and Northland Prep’s athletic branch changed into recognized for having the very best quantity of multi-sport athletes nominated for this 12 months’ award.
Marquez turned into a 3-recreation famous person in soccer, hockey, and baseball for NPA. He was crew captain his senior 12 months and become named Second Team All-Central Region as he helped the Spartans baseball crew attain the 2A Conference kingdom quarterfinals. In football, he became defensive captain his senior 12 months.
Marquez had his maximum prolific hitting season for his baseball profession at some stage in his junior marketing campaign wherein he hit for a .486 batting average, registered 36 hits, and tallied in 23 RBIs.
Smith became a celebrity for the Coconino Panthers in cross u. S. A ., a key defender for the soccer crew and a state champion within the 300-meter hurdles event — which earned her the 2019 Arizona Daily Sun Girls Track Athlete and Field of the Year award this spring. Smith competed in the kingdom pass u. S. A. Meet all 4 years and was a pressure at the country tune and discipline meet her junior and senior years.
In her final outing at the nation music and discipline meet, Smith, becomes locked in a good race that got her all the way down to an imaging finish. She barely edged out her competitor to take her first-ever gold medal within the state music and area meets at the Division III level. Shortly after taking gold inside the hurdles, she earned bronze within the 800m run.
The award for Smith caps off a senior yr that netted her lots of hardware. She became also named a recipient of Flagcoco’s annual Spirit Awards in advance this week.
NAZ Elite’s Grayson Murphy become the guest speaker at the May 14 occasion on the Coconino Center of the Arts. She stimulated the crowd along with her non-public to enjoy as a multi-recreation athlete who had in no way ran till she walked on for the Santa Clara move u. S. Crew her sophomore 12 months.
Although Murphy now competes in running at an expert level, she credits her harm-free going for walks profession to her lifelong participation in multiple sports activities, together with soccer, trekking, skiing, mountain biking, street biking, surfing, and yoga.
Eight other athletes were venerated as finalists for the awards, inclusive of Northland Prep’s Kate Bailey, Emma Blair, and Fred Gooding, Coconino’s Kenzie Palmer, Dawson Buckley, Ty Furr, and Brennan Motes, and Flagstaff’s Isabella Naughton.
To date, Flagstaff Sports Institute has supplied nearby children athletes with extra than $7,000 in scholarships, knowledgeable extra than a hundred athletes inside the Injury Prevention and Performance Enhancement education Program, furnished ImPACT concussion exams freed from price to over three hundred athletes, and mounted Certified Athletic Training Programs at two neighborhood schools.
