Katie Virtue and Kyle Rose were named the Sweet Home Booster Club’s Athletes of the Year at the Boosters’ annual sports awards dinner, held Tuesday, May 27, at the Community Center.
Virtue led the Sweet Home softball team in hitting this season, with a batting average of over .700 and on-base percentage of more than 80 percent and was named Sky-Em Player of the Year. Rose, despite a stunted left arm, has been a four-year participant in soccer, basketball and the javelin, and has earned All-League honors in all three sports.
Keynote speaker Scott Green, a coach and referee who lives in Southern California and is a longtime friend of Athletic Director Steve Brown, told the students how he had three dreams as a high schooler that were all realized – but none in the way he expected.
“I wanted to play for the Lakers with Kareem Abdul Jabbar, I wanted to drive a cool sports car – a 240Z, and I wanted to hit a home run in the World Series,” Green said.
He went on to tell them he’d gotten cut from the high school JV baseball team as a senior, he ended up driving a $500 Datsun B210 hatchback. He also didn’t go far in basketball “because I was short, I couldn’t shoot and I couldn’t jump.”
“What do you do with failure?” Green asked, predicting that students’ paths will diverge widely after they leave high school. “As great as it is to have your best friend in high school, you’re going to go in different directions in life.”
He told how he grew up in a family of four boys and one foster sister, who came after his father died when he was very young, and after his mother and all four boys in 1964 were hit by a drunk driver, who sent them all to the hospital – his mother for a year. After she returned home, she decided to take in a 4-year-old girl as a foster child.
The oldest brother, a dwarf whom Green’s parents adopted because they didn’t think they could have children, became an actor in Hollywood and eventually got addicted to cocaine while sitting with other actors between scenes as ewoks in “Star Wars.” He died of heart failure after a “lifelong addiction,” Green said.
The next brother became a college professor. Another got kicked out of the Air Force and ended up homeless, dying of AIDS.
Their foster sister recently celebrated 35 years of marriage, with children and grandchildren.
“You have freedom to choose,” Green told students. “Make a wise decision.”
He said he taught for a few years, then went into business as a fund-raiser for schools, raising more than $27 million during his career. Along the way, his older brother asked him to coach his basketball team of Hollywood dwarf actors. One day they got the opportunity to play the Laker Girls at halftime during a Lakers game. Green showed a slide of himself, in a referee’s uniform, holding a basketball, with his team surrounded by Laker Girls and Kareem Abdul Jabbar.
“There I am on the basketball court with Kareem,” he told the chuckling crowd, pointing out one particular Laker Girl who appeared to be looking right at him in the photo: “And that’s Paula Abdul. She’s staring at me.”
Later, he said, he played in a celebrity golf tournament and sank a hole-in-one to win a Mercedes sports car.
Though he was a wash-out in high school baseball, Green said he had learned along the way to throw a curve in slow-pitch softball and was recruited to join a team sponsored by an oil company, a team that competed in slow-pitch World Series and other big tournaments.
“I’ve hit three home runs in World Series games,” he said.
“Seniors,” Green said, “You never know how your dreams will come true. Don’t ever give up. Don’t quit. I hope you enjoy your run, your road of life.”
Other award winners were:
U.S. Marine Corps Distinguished Athletes – Haley Kent and Ian Search;
U.S. Army Scholar Athlete – Amanda Hubbard and Chace Hutchins;
Greg Hagle Memorial Scholarship ($1,000) – Emily Marchbanks;
Spirit of a Champion – Sadie Gordon, Spencer Knight, Emily Marchbanks and Kyle Rose;
SHAF Norm Davis Memorial Scholarship – Ian Search;
Moe Award – Kyle Rose and Katie Virtue;
Larry Johnson/Bruce West Sportsmanship Award – Sadie Gordon, Courtney Kent, Spencer Knight and Michael Tolle; and
Husky Award – Kyle Rose.
OSAA/Farmers Insurance Group Scholar Athletes, who include some activities participants from choir and band, were Amanda Hubbard (4.00 GPA), Emily Marchbanks (4.00), Michael Tolle (4.00), Katie Virtue (4.00), Stephen Bishop (3.98), Auna Davis (3.89), Steven Ohmer (3.88), Haley Kent (3.87), David Lewelling (3.87), Courtney Kent (3.82), Christina Jenkins (3.80), Chace Hutchins (3.75), Kaelee Almee (3.68), Ian Wingo (3.62), J.T. Weld (3.68), Grant Kauffman (3.55) and Brianna Warth (3.54).
Sweet Home High School Hall of Fame inductees were Emily Marchbanks, Nicole Rasmussen and Katie Virtue, and Coach Billy Snow.
Wrestling Coach Steve Thorpe, who presented the Hall of Fame Awards, said Snow ranked among some of the “incredible coaches” Sweet Home has had, including Ed Nieman, Doug Peargin, Norm Davis, Rob Younger and Larry Johnson.
“We are recognizing this coach because of his numerous league, state and national coaching awards and recognitions,” he said of Snow, under whose guidance the Huskies won three state titles and multiple state trophies in track and cross-country. “Most importantly, it is because he has been shaping students to not only be great athletes but great young men and women since he arrived here my junior year, in the 1984-85 school year. He has been an example to us ‘younger’ coaches and to the staff at Sweet Home High School.”