Blessed Trinity High School has been named the winner of the Cooperative Spirit Sportsmanship Award. The award, a partnership between the Georgia High School Association (GHSA) and Georgia’s electric membership cooperatives, is presented to a GHSA member high school that “exhibits exemplary sportsmanship—particularly fairness, honesty, respect and responsibility.”

“We often refer to the four pillars of our mission statement: spiritual formation, academic excellence, artistic sensibility and athletic achievement,” said Blessed Trinity principal Frank Moore. “What sometimes gets lost, but which is equally important, is the word that precedes those four pillars of the mission statement—integrating these four components. How do you integrate these four seemingly disparate concepts? This is an ongoing challenge, but we see evidence of it all the time: scholarship awards at athletic banquets, prayer before academic classes, and most recently the recognition from our athletic region which is one of Blessed Trinity’s accomplishments of which I am the most proud: We have been awarded the Sportsmanship Award for Region 5-AAA.”

The award is determined at the end of the year by each athletic director in the region ranking the other 12 teams in the region in order of the level of sportsmanship displayed by the athletes, coaches and fans. “Being recognized by our peers in this way says more about us as a community than just about anything else I can think of, because it speaks so highly of our conduct in an area that lends itself to high emotion and frayed nerves,” said Moore.

BT athletic director Ricky Turner said that being recognized with such an honorable award is one of the pinnacles of his career.

“A few years ago Blessed Trinity was recognized with the Director’s Cup and it is an award we are very proud of, but to be honored with the Sportsmanship Award goes to a different level,” he said. “The word that comes to mind when I think of sportsmanship is respect. To have respect for your opponent, your community and, ultimately, yourself, is what our parents, coaches, teachers and administration try to instill every day. How you finish the race is as important as what place you finish in,” said Turner.

“I have said many times that I have been around programs that won a lot, that lost a lot, and everything in between,” commented Moore. “But the ones I have the fondest memories of are the ones where all involved represented themselves, their team, and their school with pride and with grace. I see that here all the time. I’m delighted that our fellow region schools saw it too.”