Cary, Eicher named Athletes of the Year for Sturgis
STURGIS — The 101st annual Exchange Club All Sports Banquet was held to honor Sturgis High School athletes on Thursday evening. The event took place once again at Sturges Young Auditorium.
This year's Outstanding Athletes of the Year were Gibson Cary for the boys and Riley Eicher for the girls. The athletes of the year are voted on by coaches yearly and are seniors. Chance Stewart, football coach at SHS, spoke on Cary's behalf. Lesley Starkey, head girl's track and field coach at SHS, spoke for Eicher.
"I wasn't coming here expecting to win athlete of the year, but it's awesome," Cary said after the festivities. "I want to thank everyone that's helped my along the way, especially my parents who never for one second stopped helping me."
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Eicher said her being named as the athlete of the year was a bit of a surprise as well.
"Mostly, I'm kinda shocked because I wasn't expecting to get it," she said. "But I'm very happy. I'm very grateful and honored by what my coach had to say about me."
Cary said having Stewart speak on his behalf was a big deal.
"Honestly, I wouldn't have been able to do this without my coaches and my parents, especially coach Stewart," Cary said. "He wants to know you on a personal level, not just football. He wants to know how you are doing in all aspects of life and that left a big impact on my and I plan to stay in contact with him the rest of my life."
This year's Distinguished Athletes were Dalton Tisdel and Zachary Green for the boys plus Harlie Blum and Rylee Carver for the girls.
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The annual banquet highlights the achievements of student-athletes at Sturgis. Athletic Director Andy Hatt featured plenty of positives by SHS athletes this year, including conference championships in girl's golf, boy's soccer and both track teams this spring.
He also spoke of team state qualifiers with girl's golf and girl's bowling, plus the individual state champion in Lola Barkby, who won the school's first wrestling title since 1979. Sturgis had 70 athletes named All-Conference in some way for this school year, six earned All-State, three teams were named Academic All-State as well, with spring sports not even included yet.
Matt Moses, Class of 2000, was the guest speaker for the event.
Several student-athletes were honored with senior award certificates for their final participation in athletics.
Carver, Cary and George Bucklin were recognized as three-sport athletes who participated in three sports throughout their entire high school careers. Cary and Grady Miller were also honored as being the Wolverine Conference scholar athletes for this year as well.
There were 15 recipients of the Trojan scholar-athlete award as well — Blum, Cary, Adison Nettleman, Edward Miller, Carver, Green, Eicher, Grady Miller, Solana Gonzalez, Brenden Myers, Alex Luna, Taner Patrick, Tisdel, Leah Yunker and Bucklin.
Carver and Green also scooped up Ayres-Oak scholarships. Criteria for this award were a college-bound senior, nominated by a coach with six varsity letters and at least a 3.0 GPA.
Contact Sports Editor Brandon Watson at bwatson@gannett.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @BwatsonSJ.
This article originally appeared on Sturgis Journal: 101st annual Exchange Club All Sports banquet held in Sturgis
