NCS honors MSJ with Elmer Brown Award

by Vishak Menon

On Tuesday, Oct. 16 at the MSJ staff meeting, Gil Lemmon, the commissioner of the North Coast Section, came to present the Elmer Brown Award of Excellence in Academics and Athletics. This award, which was presented to MSJ for the second consecutive year, is given to the school with the most high school championships in combination with outstanding academic performance. Scholarship is important to NCS, and Lemmon stated that more pennants are given annually from NCS for academics than for athletics.

This prestigious accolade is named after Elmer Brown, a former NCS commissioner and long time head coach at Santa Rosa High School. Brown was known to be a strong advocate of combining passion for athletics with an equal fervor for education. With 169 high schools, NCS is the fourth largest conference in California and stretches from MSJ to the south to Del Norte High School in Crescent City to the north. NCS created this award to recognize one school whose performance embodied both athletic and academic excellence.

Last year MSJ set a new record of 100 points which was tallied based on athletic championships and academic success. MSJ’s student athletes can stand proud as they continue to keep up the good work and remain serious contenders for next year’s award.