Community Kudos: the ‘that wasn’t Jerry Brown’ edition
As we approach the end of another week, it turns out the most pressing question on readers’ minds over these past few days was not what Mexico’s unexpected victory over the Germany portends for its chances to win the World Cup, but rather, “Hey, that guy climbing the obstacle course on the front page of Monday’s paper wasn’t really Jerry Brown, was it?”
No, it wasn’t — although, to his credit, Gov. Brown does appear to be pretty spry at 80. It seems our new(ish) editor fell asleep at the switch and didn’t catch that the wrong photo captions had been used when he was proofing. Readers will be happy to know he subsequently was placed in stocks and beaten with a copy of El Centro’s municipal code. He now seems properly contrite.
As for who was really in those photos, that seems to be as good a place as any to start this week’s edition of our Community Kudos.
The young man pictured was 23-year-old Calexico native Ruben Arellano, who recently competed on NBC’s series American Ninja Warrior. Arellano moved past the qualifying round to the Los Angeles city finals, where he was eliminated from the competition. Nevertheless, he performed well and is already planning to try it again next season. We look forward to watching.
We also hope to be watching as the future of 2018 Southwest High School graduate Henry Liera unfolds. Henry, the son of immigrant field workers, was one of 300 hundred recipients nationwide of a Gates Scholarship and is scheduled to start school this fall at Stanford University. To give readers an idea how big a deal this is, more than 30,000 students nationwide applied for this scholarship, which basically pays for anything not covered by financial aid or family assistance. It means Liera has earned himself an opportunity to graduate from one of the world’s most prestigious universities with a degree and a clean slate financially.
If that doesn’t deserve kudos, we’ve set the bar way too high.
As long as we’re on the subject of academics, how about the Holtville High School spring sports programs? The school managed to take six of the seven top honors on the CIF-San Diego Section All-Academic Teams, Section Scholars. The Vikings’ baseball, boys’ golf, boys’ and girls’ swimming, and boys’ and girls’ track-and-field teams were all honored as the region’s top academic squads, which also meant they can claim the top Section Scholar for each sport. Vikings
Tino Burfield, Jace Heraz, David Lopez-Larios, Sarah Grizzle, Jonathan Osuna and Alexa Strahm were the respective academic champs in each sport listed, which means we should probably tip our cap to Vanessa Rodarte and the softball team at Borrego Springs for managing to squeeze onto the list.
Imperial Valley Press has a long tradition of supporting our local student athletes, and we reaffirmed that Wednesday night with our sixth annual Athlete of the Week banquet at the Old Eucalyptus Schoolhouse in El Centro. Congratulations to everyone named Athlete of the Week since last summer, and congratulations in particular to those recognized for special awards at last night’s event.
They were Southwest High School football coach John Mitosinka, who was named Coach of the Year; Southwest football, basketball and track standout Tyler Saikhon, who was named Male Athlete of the Year; Brawley volleyball and swimming champ Logan Nemlowill, who was chosen Female Athlete of the Year; softball player Sophie Ruiz, who was named Female Junior Athlete of the Year; and swimmer Dominic Lerma, named Male Junior Athlete of the Year.
Thank you to the businesses in the community that helped make this special event possible.