Coconino’s Woodlyn Smith and Northland Prep’s Jacob Marquez took domestic the pinnacle honors at the second annual 2019 Champions of the Mountain, and each has been provided a $1,000 scholarship.
The night, hosted through the Flagstaff Sports Institute, delivered the athletic groups collectively from 3 nearby excessive colleges, Flagstaff High School, Coconino High, and Northland Prep Academy, to honor Flagstaff’s best multi-recreation athletes. Finalists have been selected based totally on their extraordinary athletic accomplishments, person, leadership, and community provider.
Ten graduating senior multi-sport athletes were commemorated at this yr’s ceremony, $3,000 in scholarships were presented in general, and Northland Prep’s athletic branch turned into diagnosed for having the best quantity of multi-sport athletes nominated for this yr’s award.
Marquez became a 3-recreation superstar in soccer, hockey, and baseball for NPA. He changed into crew captain his senior yr and turned into named Second Team All-Central Region as he helped the Spartans baseball crew reach the 2A Conference kingdom quarterfinals. In football, he changed into protecting captain his senior 12 months.
Marquez had his maximum prolific hitting season for his baseball career during his junior campaign in which he hit for a .486 batting average, registered 36 hits, and tallied in 23 RBIs.
Smith became a celebrity for the Coconino Panthers in go u. S ., a key defender for the football group and a kingdom champion inside the 300-meter hurdles event, earned her the 2019 Arizona Daily Sun Girls Track Athlete and Field of the Year award this spring. Smith competed within the country pass united states meet all four years and changed into a force on the kingdom song and field meet her junior and senior years.
In her very last outing at the state tune and subject meet, Smith became locked in a tight race that got here all the way down to an image end. She slightly edged out her competitor to take her first-ever gold medal inside the nation music and area meets on the Division III level. Shortly after taking gold within the hurdles, she earned bronze in the 800m run.
The award for Smith caps off a senior yr that netted her plenty of hardware. She changed into also named a recipient of Flagcoco’s annual Spirit Awards earlier this week.
NAZ Elite’s Grayson Murphy became the guest speaker at the May 14 occasion on the Coconino Center of the Arts. She stimulated the gang with her personal revel in as a multi-sport athlete who had never run until she walked on for the Santa Clara move u. S. A . Crew her sophomore 12 months.
Although Murphy now competes in running at an expert stage, she credits her injury-unfastened strolling profession to her lifelong participation in more than one sport, such as football, hiking, skiing, mountain biking, avenue cycling, surfing, and yoga.
Eight other athletes were venerated as finalists for the awards, including 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 greater than $7,000 in scholarships, knowledgeable more than a hundred athletes within the Injury Prevention and Performance Enhancement training Program, provided ImPACT concussion checks freed from rate to over 300 athletes, and installed Certified Athletic Training Programs at nearby schools.
