One of only two Section III schools to receive the honor this year
The New York State Public High School Athletic Association recently honored Cazenovia High School as a “School of Distinction” for having all its varsity sports teams earn a collective grade point average of 90 or above.
The honor was announced in June but the award was given to Cazenovia on Oct. 4 — and district Athletic Director Michael Byrnes and a group of scholar-athletes presented their achievement to the district Board of Education on Oct. 17.
This is the first time Cazenovia earned School of Distinction honors from NYSPHSAA, and it was one of only two teams in Section III this year to receive the honor, along with Christian Brothers Academy in Syracuse.
“This award means a lot to our student-athletes most, but also a lot to our coaches, teachers, administrators and parents. A very high percentage of our students strive to be their best each and every day in the classroom, out in the community and in the athletic arena based on their own personal motivations,” Byrnes said. “This School of Distinction award is symbolic of a holistic approach often taken in Cazenovia in that we have great, hard-working students in our school with many talents and interests, and these students are quite fortunate in that they are able to take advantage of these opportunities given the support from their homes and at the school to do so. Given that we boast a participation rate of over 67 percent of high school students being able to participate on at least one sports team each school year, this School of Distinction award is an award that almost everyone can say they contributed towards. We should all be very proud.”
Cazenovia saw all 24 varsity teams in 2015-16 school year achieve NYSPHSAA Scholar-Athlete status. Each of those teams used a minimum required number of students’ grades from each team to create an average of 90 percent or better.
The purpose of the “School of Distinction” award is to unite varsity coaches in challenging their teams to achieve a statewide honor, in addition to the already established Scholar-Athlete Team State Championship title declared annually in each of 32 sports.
