Annual ceremony honors students’ success, dedication

Honoring girls tennis, girls volleyball and the football team, the annual fall sports banquet will be taking place, Oct. 18. Recognizing teams and awarding select players, the banquet gathers athletes across the student body. 

Athletic Director Jon Penberthy sees the banquet as an opportunity for families to come together to celebrate and support the athletes for their season.

“It is a time where we get to celebrate the success of the student athletes,” Penberthy said. “We give out awards to them, and for parents a lot of times it’s being able to continually support them because they’ve done a great job”

Andrew Moore, ’21, just finished his second year on the football team, and believes it is important for athletes to get the recognition they deserve.

“I believe it’s important to have a sports banquet because it recognizes those on the team,” Moore said. “And for those who might not get a ton of recognition for being on the team, that might be a big deal.”

The sports banquets are not only a time to recognize and reward athletes, but also to get the teams together for one last night to celebrate their season.

“We get to celebrate our athletes and reward them for their hard work, ” Penberthy continued, “and we also get to wrap up a season and get the football team together one last time to hang out. The volleyball and girls tennis team also get to spend kind of one last night together”

In the following podcast, Feather staffer Celeste Castaneda, ’21,  interviews Jon Penberthy about the goal of the fall sports banquet.

Involved in girls tennis this past season, Samantha Portale, ’21, looks forward to the banquet and being with her team once again.

“I think sports banquets are important to acknowledge what our team has accomplished,” Portale said. “I’m excited to be with my team one last time.”

Penberthy encourages athletes to keep working hard and hopes the banquet inspires individual teams to improve for the next season.

“The ultimate goal is really just to celebrate our athletes,” Penberthy said, “we had a really good fall season. We wan to keep the focus on how well they did and going forward how to keep building momentum as individual teams”

Over the years, Penberthy has seen the banquets improve through the work of the athletes; each year there are additional awards and athletes at the event.

“Our teams are getting bigger, girls tennis three years ago we almost shut the team down and this year they go to the number one seed so that’s a huge improvement,” Penberthy said. “We’ve added junior varsity volleyball and our football team is still growing as well, so with that we get to celebrate more athletes and the sports that they’re doing.” 

The fall sports banquet will be held in the PC gym, 6:30 p.m., Nov. 18.

For more articles, read Sadies 2019: Santa Cruz beach boardwalk or Custodians: More than just a clean-up crew.

Celeste Castaneda can be reached via email.