Next week will be busy but will also be one of my favorite weeks of the athletic year. On Monday, I will get to travel to Savannah, Ga. to cheer on our women's tennis team in the Southeast Regional as they take on defending three-time national champion Armstrong Atlantic. On Tuesday night we hold our annual Athletic Awards Banquet in Moffatt Dining Hall at 6 pm. The awards banquet is a time for us to honor many accomplishments of our student-athletes during this past year and to say thanks to our seniors as they head out into the real world. We have a few special awards each year which take center stage at the banquet. The top senior student-athlete/s is presented with the Jake Todd Award. One of the criteria for this award is that the recipient not only be an outstanding performer on the field but maintain a 3.0 GPA as well. Ironically we have never had any problem with that, because history has shown that student-athletes at Erskine who excel in their sport also show the same discipline when it comes to grades.
We will also present the Karen Bell Award on Tuesday night to the student-athlete who best represents Christian mission during their athletic participation. This is a special award for me because Karen was a loyal Erskine athletics staff member for many years and still four years after her passing, I still miss her dearly. We also will unveil a new award this year which is a secret until Tuesday night but will be tied into service. Tuesday will also allow us to honor Jocelyn Smith, the 2011 Conference Carolinas Murphy-Osborne winner as the top student-athlete in the league. Jocelyn picked up the double play of accomplishments this spring as her softball team won their first-ever conference title.
The week will end on Friday with the Flying Fleet Festival at Cherokee Trail Elementary. The festival is is a field day for the students at Cherokee Trail run by our student-athletes at Erskine. Three years ago when we first started the festival I worried that our student-athletes would complain about taking time out of Reading Day to come help out. What we have seen has been totally different. The majority of our athletes have just as much fun at the festival as the elementary kids. It is a great community engagement program for us and helps our student-athletes give back to the Due West area.
So next week is going to be busy, but what a great time it will be for Erskine Athletics and for me personally, it makes me glad to be the athletic director. Go Fleet!
