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Parks, Smith Honored with Northeast-10 Male Sportsmanship Award
Northeast-10 Commissioner Julie
Ruppert (L) with Tyler Parks (center) and Mike Smith (R)
Burlington, Vt. –Southern New Hampshire University junior Mike Smith (Lynnfield, Mass.) and sophomore Tyler Parks (Moultonborough, N.H.) were honored as the 2009-10 Northeast-10 Male Sportsmanship Award recipients Monday evening. The pair were honored at the Northeast-10’s annual end of the year awards banquet in Burlington, Vt.
Each year, the Northeast-10 honors a male and female student-athlete that have demonstrated one or more of the ideals of sportsmanship, including fairness, civility, honesty, unselfishness, respect and responsibility. The sportsmanship recipients will be forwarded as the conference’s nominees for the NCAA Sportsmanship award. The NCAA will select a male and female winner from each of the three divisions as finalists, and then one male and female will be selected as the NCAA Sportsmanship Award winners.
The men’s sportsmanship award was presented to Southern New Hampshire cross country athletes Smith and Parks for their actions during the New England Championships in October. Midway through the third mile of the 8k championship course, Smith came across a Boston University runner who apparently passed out and was unconscious lying on the ground.
Smith began to help the runner up as Parks, who was seconds behind Smith in the race, ran over to his teammate to assist. Both Smith and Parks were able to aid the runner out of the wooded area of the course and to the closest medical tent where an ambulance was waiting to take the runner to the nearest hospital.
“This is what true sports is
all about. In an era where sports are generally demeaned in so many
ways, this goes to show that helping another person is more
important than winning a race,” said Chip Polak, Director of
Athletics at Southern New Hampshire. “For Tyler and Mike to
sacrifice their own finish in a race to help someone in need was
truly a selfless act.”
As a result of their actions, neither Smith nor Parks were able to
finish the championship race, however, the end result was rewarding
enough. The BU runner, who passed out from dehydration, ended
up being okay thanks to the self-sacrifice both Smith and Parks
portrayed during the race.
With 16 member institutions the Northeast-10 shares the distinction of being the largest Division II conference in the country along with the PSAC and WVIAC. Its 23 championship sports provide athletic opportunities for over 5,500 student-athletes, the largest such program of any Division II conference.
Release courtesy Northeast-10 Conference
Photo by Shane
Bufano
