Aberdeen and Lake Quinault football programs were awarded the South Sound Football Officials Association’s Sportsmanship Award for the 2019 season, the SSFOA announced on Tuesday.
Aberdeen won the large-school award, which covered 2A, 3A and 4A classifications.
Lake Quinault was honored with the award for the 1B, 2B and 1A sections.
As part of winning the Sportsmanship award, each school will select two students to receive a $1,000 scholarship award.
According to Aberdeen head coach Todd Bridge, the Bobcats were honored in part because of their lack of penalties across the program.
“I was thinking we had a chance at this since there were games when we may have had maybe two penalties the entire contest,” he said, adding the honor encompasses the 21 games played between the Aberdeen varsity, JV and C-squad.
Bridge added that he and his coaching staff had to focus on discipline as penalties would have been “devastating” to the Bobcats’ ball-control offense.
“Because there is so much trash talking in sports, which we absolutely do not condone, I once blurted out, ‘The scoreboard is a measurement of violence, not vocabulary.’ The emphasis was, let your pads do the talking, not your mouth,” Bridge said.”I was consistently amazed at how few penalty yards this year’s team received, but we relentlessly hounded them, as a coaching staff , at what a 15-yard penalty could do to our ball control offense. … When we want 17 plays and nine minutes (of an offensive drive), a selfish personal foul would wreck everything.”
The full statement from the SSFOA is as follows:
For several years the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association and the Washington Officials Association have placed an emphasis on sportsmanship in High School sports throughout the state.
The South Sound Football Officials Association (SSFOA) took this initiative very seriously and in 1998 we created a sportsmanship scholarship program. Eligibility for our scholarship program centers on schools in our service area, players, coaches and fans which exemplify sportsmanship in their football programs. Since 1998 we have provided over $48,000 to help young men and women further their education at the next level.
Our members selected Aberdeen (2A, 3A and 4A schools) and Lake Quinault (1B, 2B and 1A schools) to receive the South Sound Football Officials Association Sportsmanship Award for 2019 season. Each school will select two students to receive our scholarship award, each student will receive a $1,000 scholarship to help further their education at the next level.
Our officials donate money from their game fees to cover the cost of these scholarships along with a generous donation of $2,500 from Dr. Mark Simmonds of Simmonds Chiropractic who wants to support the program. We as an Association believe strongly in giving back to communities and this is one way that we can have a positive impact.
Congratulations to all the schools this year for an outstanding season, and especially to this year’s winners, Aberdeen and Lake Quinault.
