LAKE COUNTY — Athlete of the Year finalist Brianna Alves of Middletown High School will be profiled in the Wednesday print edition of the Lake County Record-Bee.
Alves, an incoming senior at Middletown, is one of 10 finalists for the newspaper’s Athlete of the Year Award. She will be the sixth athlete featured with a full-page commemorative photo that also chronicles her achievements during the 2019-20 high school sports season. The fifth athlete, Clear Lake’s Darius Ford, appears in Friday’s print version of the Record-Bee.
To date, Kelseyville’s Allison Bryant, Middletown’s Jared Pyzer, Clear Lake’s Jaron Mertle and Shaelyn McIntire have been honored.
Each high school sports season the Record-Bee honors two athletes — one boy and one girl — and two coaches — one in girls sports and one in boys sports — with Athlete of the Year and Coach of the Year awards.
Athlete of the Year finalists are usually asked to compete in a minimum of two varsity sports but that requirement has been waived for 2019-20 because the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the 2020 spring sports season. Athletes must be juniors or seniors who are in good academic standing at their respective schools. All-League honors as well as input from coaches and sports officials help the Record-Bee pick the winners.
All of this season’s finalists will receive their own full-page photo. This year’s finalists among the girls are Bryant, McIntire, Alves and Middletown’s Abbey Brown and Sophie Kucer. Finalists among the boys are Pyzer, Mertle, Ford, Lower Lake’s Vann Wilkins and Clear Lake’s Travis Howe.
Once all the finalists have been featured, the Athlete of the Year and Coach of the Year winners will be announced, each receiving his/her own commemorative page in the print edition as well as full-length stories in both the print and online editions.
A portion of the proceeds from advertising sales for the commemorative photos are being returned to the athletes in the form of scholarships. Individuals or businesses can sponsor one or more athletes by sending an email to Sarah McGrath at smcgrath@record-bee.com.
