Jones among those honored at first-ever Feather Awards
LFO High School’s athletic department, its athletes, coaches and supporters, recently gathered at the Catoosa County Colonnade to honor its own in the first annual Feather Awards.
LFO Athletic Director Chris Eaves said the ceremony came about as a way to unite the entire athletic department.
“I was originally thinking about just having a small ceremony in the cafeteria to honor some of our athletes,” he explained. “But as we began to think about it and grow about it, by the time January and February rolled around, we had it all set up to where we had an alumni selection committee, who would select the finalists for each award. We had the Colonnade reserved and we had presenters for the awards. Corey Ortwein did an unbelievable job as far as putting the presentations and the videos together.
“The whole purpose was for the athletes to come together and it was absolutely tremendous. I can’t imagine it working out any better than what it did.”
Dylan Simpson was presented with the Director’s Feather. K.K. Rowe was awarded the One Passion Feather. Anna Rountree earned the Academic Achievement Feather, while the Team Academic Achievement Feather went to the boys’ golf team.
The Female Legacy Feather went to Macey Gregg, while the Male Legacy Feather was awarded to Nathan Williams. Basketball standout Ruddy Ware earned Play of the Year, while the Warriors’ football team was presented with the Team of the Year Award.
The athletic department also presented its first Legacy Builder Award to former and longtime legendary basketball coach Jerry Jones.
“The Feather Awards were about our athletes, but the more we got to thinking about it, the more we realized we need to honor some of our faculty and coaches as well,” Eaves continued. “So we decided on the Legacy Builder Award since the vision for LFO High School is about building a legacy, one student at a time. We’ve got a
lot of faculty and coaches here that are building legacies and Coach Jones is one of them.
“We had an unbelievable tribute video that Corey did, but an eight-minute video and a two-minute speech by (current basketball head coach) Josh Laney really doesn’t do Coach Jones justice. Still, it was the least we could do to be able to say a little bit about what he has meant to the school.”
Due to Jones’ current medical issues, neither he nor members of his fam
ily were able to attend the ceremony in person, but Eaves said the family was presented with a copy of the tribute video that was shown during the ceremony. A copy of that video can also be seen on the Catoosa Walker News Facebook site.
Eaves said he hopes the Feather Awards become an annual tradition for the school.
“We’ll see,” he added. “The cost was minimal, but we’ll have to see where we can hold it next year. We packed the Colonnade Theater out, so we’ll have to see if we can do it again there next year or if we’ll need a different venue.”