Athlete of the Year

Admittedly, the meeting mavens watch more meetings than sporting events (except when it’s football season) but we’re going to go ahead and select Bob Knight, president of Clark College, as our first Athlete of the Year.

Last weekend I covered the dedication of Luke Jensen Sports Park, which included a celebrity kickball game. Since I was going to run the Vancouver USA half-marathon the following day, I actually sat down for a bit while I was watching the kickball game because I didn’t want to tire out my legs.

On Monday, a few people in the newsroom asked me who I thought the best kickball player was, and I said Knight, who was on Mayor Tim Leavitt’s winning team.

Look how the leader of Penguin Nation hustles:

(Thanks to Ken Waz for the photo).

I was even more impressed when I was looking over the marathon results. Here I am, not wanting to wear myself out by standing around the day before running a half-marathon, and Knight was running around for 90 minutes in the heat the day before running the full 26.2!

Knight, 55, finished in 5 hours, 7 minutes, an average mile pace of 11 minutes, 44 seconds.

The day after the marathon, he went to Larch Corrections Center to play in a basketball game against the inmates.

The kickball game raised money for the Dream Big Community Center.

For agreeing to be in a charity event in which it could have been easy to strain or tear something you wouldn’t want to strain or tear before running a marathon, Bob Knight is APIL’s Athlete of the Year!