Dylan Luttmer and Brooke Burke were named the Booster Club Athletes of the Year Sunday evening, June 4, at At the 2023 Senior Sports Awards Banquet at the Sweet Home Elks Lodge.
Luttmer played basketball and baseball for Sweet Home, while Burke played soccer, basketball and softball.
The award does not necessarily go to the best athlete, but rather the Booster Club looks for grades, character and service to the school and community. To be eligible, students must have no code violations and a cumulative GPA of at least 3.0.
Booster Club Co-chair Karyn Hartsook spoke about both recipients.
Of Luttmer, she said “Watching him work in the sports he does at Sweet Home High School has been a privilege. It’s just a testament of who he’s going to be later on in life.”
Of Burke, she said “I watched her give back to youth volunteering at youth camps. I watched her be the first one there [during sport functions] and the last one to leave.” Hartsook added that Burke “has a heart of service.”
Burke, along with cheerleader Luka Ogden, also won the Sweet Home High School Hall of Fame Award, which Athletic Director Dan Tow called “an athletic award.”
“You have to achieve great things in your sport to get the Hall of Fame Award,” Tow said.
On the basketball court, Burke was Sweet Home’s all-time leading scorer on the girls side, finishing her career with 1,496 points.
“I remember watching her freshman year and being like, oh, she’s gonna be good,” said Tow, whose own three children all competed in collegiate sports.
This spring Burke also helped lead the Sweet Home softball team to the playoffs as the Huskies’ starting shortstop.
“She’s fun to watch, and she goes hard in everything that she does,” Tow said.
Announcing the other recipient, Tow called Ogden “an absolutely amazing cheerleader,” noting that she was named All-state all four years of her high school career, as well as being voted as the best cheerleader in the state in Sweet Home’s classification for two of those years.
“She’s a fabulous young lady, and I’ve heard about her from the time she started as a freshman,” Tow said. “This young lady is very talented, and people at the highest levels in college and everything, they want her.”
The Moe Award, which is given to someone who leads by example, has excellent work ethic, and who coaches would be proud to call their own, was given to Jake Sieminski and Makayla Guthrie.
Sieminski is best known athletically for being a three-time state wrestling champion. He also played football and baseball for Sweet Home, in addition to stints in track and cross country. (For that variety, Sieminski won the Husky Award for playing three sports all four years. Also given that honor was Kaden Zajic, who played football, wrestling and baseball).
Guthrie was Sweet Home’s pitching ace on the softball field this season. She also played volleyball for the Huskies.
The Scholar Athlete Award, which goes to kids who excelled athletically and in the classroom, went to Luttmer and Zoey Erevia, who played volleyball and wrestled.
The Larry Johnson Sportsmanship Award, named after the former Sweet Home High School Athletic Director and longtime community member, went to Kelsie Rush, Riley Korn and Daniel Goodwin. Rush played softball and wrestled, Korn played basketball and golf, and Goodwin played baseball and wrestled.
The Bruce West Spirit of a Champion Award went to Sieminski, Erevia, Ethan Spencer, Suzie Griffin, and Kylie Hayes. The namesake coached Sweet Home athletes to state titles in boys wrestling (1976), girls track (1983), and football (1987). The award goes to someone who perseveres despite tough situations.
Spencer wrestled and won a state championship his senior year. Griffin and Hayes were both cheerleaders.
The Distinguished Athlete Award, which recognizes a boy and girl who serve as role models for others, went to Sieminski and Burke.
Dr. Krystina Tack, a 1997 Sweet Home High School graduate, was the keynote speaker.
She works in radiation oncology for Texas Oncology, a large provider in Texas, and owns her own company, Tack, Inc.
Previously she was director of the medical physics graduate program in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, where she also served as an assistant professor.
She is a published cancer researcher and a John Angus Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.
While she describes herself as “not an amazing athlete” who played on “a bunch of losing teams,” she shared with seniors what she learned from sports competing for Sweet Home in basketball and volleyball and for Linn-Benton Community College in the latter.
Tack argued that sports can concisely teach kids coaching and coachability, physical training, mental toughness and teamwork.
She said “Coaching is very valuable if you actually get through to someone. If you ever have a really good boss, they’re actually a really great coach. They’re trying to get the most out of you and the entire team.”
On coachability, she said “I know now that if someone tells me I’m doing something wrong, I probably need to hear it, which is a reminder to stay coachable your whole life. It gets harder and harder the better you think you are at something. That’s just a challenge for everybody.”
On physical training, she said “I always love a good tough workout to this day. It makes me proud of what I can physically do. And I believe in training to stay ready for life, no matter what life is going to throw at you. And it will throw some weird curveballs at you for sure.”
On mental toughness, she said “Some of the biggest challenges in life, while they might be terrible, I know that I can handle it because of mental toughness. And those were things that were built slowly when I was a kid playing sports.”
On teamwork, she said “The really tough days and weeks make for a tighter team. Sometimes that’s a team at home, sometimes it’s your team at work. Teamwork is always valuable, and actually it’s the only way to accomplish really complicated things like building and raising a family, or curing cancer, which is what I do at my work. I can only do one piece. I’m part of a bigger team.”
In closing, she said “Thank your coaches, but most of all thank your parents and your family for supporting you in sports. Because they did it to teach you something that a parent alone cannot teach you.
“Sports is the epitome of learning by doing. My hope for you is that you take all the best parts of sports and fill your world full of them. And then life feels like the game that you’re winning.”