Section One to present new Community Service Award in 2024-25

Award creates a new category to honor athletes and coaches

Section One Athletics has created a Community Service Award to recognize the outstanding charitable work of student-athletes and coaches.

Beginning this fall, a winner will be selected each season by the section’s Sportsmanship Committee. Administrators, coaches and student-athletes can apply on behalf of their team or school. 

The award will fill a void. When reviewing applications for the section’s Sportsmanship Award, committee members often learned about impressive acts of community service.

“Many of these teams that had shown great sportsmanship were also submitting applications that touted these outstanding community service projects,” said Jesse Merchant, Assistant Director of Interscholastic Athletics for SWBOCES and Section One. “For some, there were tens of thousands of dollars raised throughout the year toward good causes.”

The committee saw that some communities offered more opportunities than others for such acts of service.

“Not all kids have the opportunity to do that level of community service,” Sportsmanship Committee chair and Greenburgh-North Castle Athletic Director Anthony Nicodemo said, “and those efforts were trumping teams that exhibited good sportsmanship.”

The new award will allow teams and student-athletes to be honored for more worthy achievements.

“Overall, we thought it was important to recognize both (sportsmanship and community service),” Mr. Merchant said. “We continue to make a push to recognize student athletes for all of the awesome stuff they are doing on and off the court.”

Pictured: The Byram Hills Hockey Team presented a donation of more than $10,000 to the American Cancer Society, an example of outstanding community service by Section One athletes.