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Show Lauder named most popular coach By TOM HARALDSEN Sports Editor Last winter, when we first considered consi-dered the Clipper Coach of the Year Contest idea, we had several thoughts. Would anyone really take the time to fill out a ballot, and bring it in? What if only a few people peo-ple voted? We felt the idea of having hav-ing a popularity contest where . players and parents could give their favorite coaches some recognition recog-nition was a good idea. What an idea? Friday, more than 18,000 ballots came in the doors of the Davis County Clipper, resulting in lots of counting Friday evening and Saturday Satur-day morning. And when all was said and done, South Davis Soccer Association coach Da Von Lauder emerged as our first winner. Lauder garnered 5,366 votes, beating out Woods Cross High soccer soc-cer coach Kevin Rigby; who finished with 4,684 votes. Roger Smith, the bantam team basketball coach out of South Davis Junior High, finished a strong third with 4,028 votes. Coach Lauder's efforts were aided when almost 3,000 votes came in for him at 5:45 p.m. Friday. Fri-day. At that time, it looked like Rigby would win. He had received over 3,000 votes himself earlier in the day. But the youth soccer players play-ers put their efforts forward for Da Von, whose son David is a star player at Viewmont High. During the two-week contest, over 22,400 ballots arrived, most of them photocopied ballots with ori ginal signatures. Each ballot was checked, to be sure the coache's name appeared and was an original vote. There were several stacks of ballots that arrived with blanks left unfilled, and they were not counted. But at least 99 percent of all ballots turned in were legitimate. legiti-mate. In all, 54 different coaches received re-ceived votes. Rounding out the top five were Viewmont's Vi Hillman, who garnered 1 ,954 votes, most of those in a three-day period; and Bountiful's Pete Steiner, who re-, re-, ceived 1,634 vctes. Saltos gymnasts got behind several sev-eral of their coaches, with Blake Starr finishing sixth. Kent Whitehead White-head of SDSA was seventh, Sharon Shar-on Wangsgard of South Davis Junior High eighth, Woods Cross coach Debbie Peel ninth and Boun-tiful Boun-tiful coach Jill Avery tenth. Votes came in all varieties, from all areas of youth athletics. Many people called Thursday and Friday to get vote updates, and one lady said on Friday that she had spent about $25 in photocopy costs for her favorite coach. Perhaps the success of the contest con-test was best expressed by one young mother who brought in ballots bal-lots on Friday for coaches at USA Gymnastics World. "Thanks for the fun," she stated as she was leaving. "The kids have really enjoyed it." So did we, and fun was what it was all about. Coach Lauder will be saluted in a future article in the Clipper and will receive a special award. |
