Garden City High School held their annual G.A.A.–B.A.A. Awards Banquet on June 3 at Chateau Briand in Westbury. The event is sponsored each year by The Men’s Association of Garden City and honors the many senior student athletes and major award winning underclassmen for their accomplishments throughout the school year. And Garden City has many!
The Girls and Boys Athletics Associations have a rich tradition and history and continue to dedicate themselves to the Garden City athletics program each year. BAA President Christian Capozzi opened the night by introducing the officers of both associations as well as leading the attendees in the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance.
As the more than 300 student athletes, coaches, parents and administrators settled in for dinner, Garden City and District Athletic Director Nancy Kalafus welcomed everyone to a night of celebration of the significant accomplishments of the GC student athletes. Earlier this year, for the seventh time, Garden City High School received the Scholar/Athlete Team School of Distinction Award from the New York State Public High School Athletic Association (NYSPHSAA). To qualify, each of the high school’s 32 varsity teams needed to achieve a collective average GPA of 90 or higher. This honor goes along with the numerous County, Long Island and State Championships that the school has collected in 2013.
Kalafus then introduced Pete Haeffner, the president of the TMA, who congratulated the coaches and players for their continued contributions to Garden City. Pete reiterated the TMA’s charter, which is to support the student athletes of the Garden City school system in any way that they can— this dinner being only one of many that they have contributed to over the years.
Jake White, school historian and keeper of Garden City sports programs statistics, was next on the microphone to announce the Class of 2013 inductees into the Garden City High School Sports Hall of Fame. White announced that this year’s group was unique in that all four inductees are women, not unusual for a school that over the years has had one of the best girls programs in all sports on Long Island.
The four 2013 Hall of Fame honorees are Erin Brennan (2008, lacrosse and field hockey), Erica Derlath (2008, swimming), Becky Lynch (2008, lacrosse, basketball and soccer) and Coach Anne Sullivan (1973, girls and boys swimming). They join a long list of inductees that started in 1980.
A special acknowledgement and honor was then presented to coach Tom Flatley by Joe Giannotti representing Section VIII and, who attended the banquet to announce that Flatley will be inducted into the NYSPHSAA Hall of Fame on July 25 in Rochester. As part of Giannotti’s speech, he glowingly spoke of Coach Flatley’s tremendous honors and achievements highlighted by the fact the he has the best winning percentage of any football coach in Long Island history including 18 Nassau and five Long Island Championships. In addition to his football coaching legacy of almost 50 years at Garden City and Sewanhaka High Schools, Coach Flatley was head coach of the 1982 US National Lacrosse team which won a World Championship, has been GM of seven World Champion U-19 National Lacrosse teams and is a member of the Metropolitan Lacrosse Hall of Fame. Giannotti concluded by saying, “Tom Flatley has been and continues to be a significant contributor to the foundation of Garden City’s athletic programs and its exceptional student athletes.”
The night then moved into the awards distribution which was organized according to sports season and also included nine special award winners highlighted by the winners of the Prusan Award and Wassung Trophy for the highest point totals in the GAA and BAA, respectively. Points are awarded for participation in a varsity sport, being awarded All-County or All-State, as well as added points for being named captain of a team.
This year’s Prusan winner as the girl with the most points was Paulette Mohacsi and the Wassung winner for the most points by a boy was given to Andrew Morra.
The full list of winners for the 2012-13 school year, along with all previous winners, can be found at http://highschool.gardencity.k12.ny.us/athletics_/Awards/.
The night was brought to a formal close by GAA President Kelsey Tierney who thanked all students, coaches, teachers, administrators and parents for an excellent evening.
