COVID-19 creates changes to annual Hitchcock, Sewell and Bradford Awards
The 2019 Hitchcock Award winners Trey Lindsey and Isabelle Cochran pose with speaker Glen Coffee. The 2020 awards will be announced in early May. (Courtesy Greater Montgomery YMCA)
By TIM GAYLE
Christian leadership awards, which are usually handed out at this time of the year during splashy banquets with high-profile speakers, are having to adjust to video presentations and mailed certificates in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Jimmy Hitchcock Award banquet was originally set for Tuesday, May 5 at Frazer United Methodist Church but after adjustments was made because of the virus, the date will remain but the format has changed.
“We’ve canceled the banquet and instead of having the banquet we’re going to have a news conference,” said Hitchcock program director Hayley White. “We’re planning to put out yard signs (as notice) in all the senior nominee’s yards and hand them their certificates and the materials they would have received at the banquet.”
The featured speaker last year was former Alabama running back Glen Coffee, who achieved national recognition after walking away from his job with the San Francisco 49ers to join the Army. Coffee is one of several former high-profile collegiate stars who have spoken at the banquet, along with Danny Wuerffel, Gabe Gross, Pat Sullivan and Bart Starr.
“There’s no speaker this year,” White said. “We’re doing everything over Zoom to make those selections.”
The 2019 winners were Montgomery Academy’s Trey Lindsey and Catholic’s Isabelle Cochran. The selection committee has chosen one overall winner from the banquet honoring the top Christian student-athletes since 1960, adding a second (female) winner to the honor beginning in 1991.
The first event on the spring schedule would have been the 34th annual Prattville YMCA-Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ Christian Leadership Banquet at the First United Methodist Church in Prattville, held annually in late April. After adjustments, the winners will be announced at a press conference at the Willis Bradford Branch on May 12.
The 2019 winner of the Willis Bradford Christian Leadership Award was Prattville High baseball and football standout Brandon Butts, one of seven nominees selected by their respective high schools in Autauga County. The featured speaker was Connor Short, a former baseball player at both Auburn (2015) and Alabama (2016-18) who is now the FCA representative for the Tuscaloosa area.
“The number one goal, really, is to find a way to award that scholarship and we know we’re not going to be able to (do that in a normal banquet setting) before the end of the school year,” said program director Otis Reeves of the Prattville YMCA. “We have several options. We were waiting on the official word (from the governor) at the end of the month but it doesn’t really matter what they say, we’re not going to put 180 people in one room sitting shoulder to shoulder. That’s not going to happen.”
In addition to the school winners, each school is allowed to nominate up to five athletes for the YMCA-FCA Christian Leadership Circle and the Prattville YMCA also presents a T.O. McDowell Christian Leadership Award.
“The fellowship was amazing,” Reeves said. “There were some really quality speakers in front of great young people and great young coaches.”
The speaker was scheduled to be Auburn junior running back Malik Miller. And while the plaques have been ordered for the seven school winners and the T.O. McDowell Award, interviews with the seven to choose the Willis Bradford Christian Leadership Award were conducted Monday with a Zoom video conference and the overall winner – along with the T.O. McDowell Award winner – will be presented at a press conference on May 12.
The Christian Leadership Circle winners will receive their certificates via mail.
The 16th annual Joe Sewell Memorial Award, presented early in May at the Wetumpka Civic Center, honors the top student-athlete with Christian leadership ideals from Elmore County. The committee decided in early April to push the banquet back to Tuesday, July 21.