Ocean County Sportsmanship Awards Breakfast

The Ocean County Directors of Athletics held their 17th annual Ocean County Sportsmanship Awards Breakfast yesterday at the Quality Inn of Toms River. Each of the county high schools had a male and female senior student-athlete honored for their citizenship, fairness, ethics and general qualities of sportsmanship. As I have for 16 of the 17 years this has been held I served as Master of Ceremonies and once again applaud the Athletic Directors for recognizing these outstanding ambassadors for their schools.

Also honored was Point Pleasant Boro’s Bill Larkin as the county Athletic Director of the Year, a well-deserved honor for a man who has devoted his entire career to students first as a teacher and coach and most recently as the AD and Supervisor of Health & Physical Education at both the middle and high schools. I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday’s breakfast and enjoyed sitting with the family of Brick Memorial honoree Brian Staub, a three-sport athlete who will play football at Springfield College in the fall.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that yesterday’s event was the last for Walt Peto, the District Athletic Director for the Toms River Regional School District. Walt will retire at the end of this month and recently he was honored at a surprise retirement party which unfortunately I could not attend. He has spent the bulk of his professional career in Toms River and was a teacher and coach before becoming the Athletic Coordinator at High School North and then the District Athletic Director the past couple of years.
He is known for his calm manner and ability to get along with others and is truly one of the good people I have been able to work with over the years.
Walt has earned his retirement and will enjoy spending time with his wife Janet and their grandchildren.

It was quite a Sunday for good friends and sports legends Tiger Woods and Roger Federer. Woods rallied from four shots back to win Jack Nicklaus’
Memorial Golf Tournament for the fourth time with a brilliant final round 7-under pat 65. Across the ocean in Paris, Federer finally won the French Open Tennis Championship and tied Pete Sampras’ record of 14 major singles titles. The two struck up a friendship after filming a TV commercial a few years ago.