Sixteen student-athletes at Central High School received recognition via the Senior Athletic Award during a ceremony at the school on the evening of May 19.

This is the first year that the school has handed out these accolades.

“In a nutshell, we decided that we were going to go away from giving individual awards, like MVPs and stuff like that,” Central Athletics Director Wallace Owen said. “We just decided we would reward seniors who had participated in a given number of sports during their high school career. Now, they had to be successfully completed. It couldn’t be someone who quit or had to quit or anything like that, other than injury.”

There were three different levels of the Senior Athletic Award. Student-athletes who participated in four to seven sports were purple-level honorees, those participating in eight to 11 sports were gold-level honorees and those participating in 12 or more were royal purple-level honorees.

“They also had to participate in a sport their senior year,” Owen said. “So they had to finish that many seasons in good standing with their team.”

The honorees received plaques varying in size based on the level they achieved, with royal purple drawing the largest hardware. Two of the 16 student-athletes honored qualified for the royal purple level — MeriAgnes Dalton and Cara Williams.

Qualifying for the gold level were Karen Edmondson, Taylor King, Josh Paynter, Brandon Scott, Brandon Williams and Erykah Wilson.

Those making the purple level included Ashley Ellis, Riley Hart, Malik Lambert, Jamori Pegram, Edward Reed, Elly Richmond, Abby Sweitzer and Michael Wright.

Owen said he hopes to have even more award winners in future years, and he enjoyed the new system of recognition that the school adopted this year, allowing its senior student-athletes to receive this award.

“I thought they were pleased to get them, and I was happy to be able to reward that many instead of just one or two or three,” he said. He noted the school used to give out some big awards, but there were always people disappointed, and it felt like there were fewer people disappointed this time.