LAKE PLACID, N.Y. -- Stony Brook University junior baseball student-athlete Stephen Marino (Lake Grove, N.Y.) and University of Hartford junior volleyball player Lindsay Makowicki (Norwich, Conn.) have been named the America East 2010 Male and Female Sportsmanship Award winners, the league announced this evening during a dinner at the Lake Placid Club Golf House as part of its annual meetings. Marino and Makowicki are now automatically eligible for the NCAA Male and Female Sportsmanship Awards, which will be determined by the NCAA Committee on Sportsmanship and Ethical Conduct in July.
To be nominated, an individual or team must have demonstrated consistently the values of caring, fairness, civility, honesty, integrity and responsibility in his or her daily participation in intercollegiate athletics. The student-athlete or team nominees must be a member of an intercollegiate athletics team during the 2009-10 academic year.
Marino demonstrated sportsmanship during the 2009 baseball season when he suffered a broken wrist. Once healed, despite being eligible for a medical red shirt due to the percentage of games played at the time of his injury, Marino approached his coach, unsolicited, to voluntarily forego his red-shirt opportunity and help his team reach the conference championship, for which the squad did eventually qualify. He put the greater good of his team above his own collegiate baseball career and his own long-term personal goals, exemplifying a true team spirit.
In addition, Marino has consistently proven good sportsmanship both on and off the field. As a fierce competitor, he still shows respect for opposing players and umpires, and always expresses encouragement for his own teammates.
Also during the 2009 season, Marino and other team leaders went to visit a local youth baseball player who was being treated with a rare blood disease at Stony Brook Hospital. Him and his teammates also registered in the national bone marrow donor registry in honor of the local youth. As a result of his actions, he learned a true sense of his role as a student-athlete.
As a member of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), Makowicki took the initiative during the fall 2009, during the middle of the volleyball season, of directing a new event at Hartford, Howie’s Sportsmanship Academy. The Academy turned out to be a huge success, receiving conference recognition. Makowicki designed the structure for the event, as well as found volunteers, created sportsmanship-specific games and wrote a skit presented by other SAAC members. Because of Makowicki’s hard work and dedication to sportsmanship, important lessons were passed on to all the children who attended the Academy and the University received many written and verbal thank you’s from grateful parents.
Makowicki has shown leadership and sportsmanship on an everyday basis throughout her collegiate career so far. She is involved with both the SAAC and the Leadership Council on campus, balancing life on and off the court which is essential to being a phenomenal student-athlete such Makowicki is. On the court, she epitomizes sportsmanship with her support for her teammates and of the rules of the game.
America East began awarding a conference Sportsmanship Award to a male and female student-athlete for the 2005-06 academic year based on the same principles and criteria as the NCAA Sportsmanship Awards. The 2008 female recipient, Hartford’s Latasha Jarrett, went on to be named the NCAA’s Division I Sportswoman of the Year.
All-Time America East Sportsmanship Award Winners
Male Female
2010 Stephen Marino, Stony Brook Lindsay Makowicki, Hartford
2009 Rich Lieberman, Hartford Softball Team, Maine
2008 Cavell Johnson, UMBC Latasha Jarrett, Hartford
2007 Ross Lohr, Boston U. Kristin Drabyn, UMBC
2006 Chris Spivey, Hartford Rachel Laws, Binghamton