Cloquet Hosts Annual Athletic Banquet

Wes Vork-NSO

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May 21

Kerry Rodd-NSO

The Cloquet High School Athletic Banquet was held on Wednesday night in the high school gym. In all, 243 student athletes received their high school letters during a packed ceremony that featured guest speaker Tony Deleon, the head football coach at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College in Cloquet.

As part of the ceremony, special recognition was given to the Lumberjack Award winner and the winners of the Male and Female Athlete’s of the Year.

The Lumberjack Award is given annually to a person in the community who has given their time to Cloquet High School athletics. The winner of the award has been dedicated to the community, to the school and to the students. This year’s winner was Jackie Hebert who has been a long time supporter of Cloquet boys and girls hockey. Hebert has kept statistics for the boy’s hockey program for the past 20 years and she has done the same for the girls program since the beginning of that program. Hebert, who grew up in Cloquet, also worked for the Cloquet paper for a number of years writing articles about the teams. She also handles calling the local media with information on all the Cloquet-Esko-Carlton boys’ and girls’ hockey games.

The winner of the Female Athlete of the Year Award went to Jes Vork. Vork, who letters in soccer, track, basketbal and
has a resume’ that is beyond impressive. In track, she was a 5-time letter winner, while she lettered in basketball and soccer 4 times. Among her many, many accomplishments she has been a state participant in track the last four years in seven different events. She has been an All-Conference selection in track in 14 different events, she has been the team MVP 3 times, and she holds the school record in the 200, 400 and 4 x 200 events as well as holding the Section 7 record in the 100 meters.

In basketball Vork scored over a 1,000 points in her career (1016) and she has been a First Team All-Conference selection from 2007-2009, she was the team captain last season, she led her team in assists and in scoring her senior season, she was named Academic All-State and she was named to the Northland Sports Online All-Area Team.

In soccer, Vork was named All-State in her sophomore, junior and senior seasons. In 2006 and 2007 she was named to the All-State Tournament Team. She was the MVP for two seasons, two year team captain and she was named All-Conference from 2005-2008 as well as to the Duluth News Tribune All-Area Team from 2006-2008.

The boys Male Athlete of the Year Award went to Simon Thill who lettered in wrestling, football and track and field.

In wrestling, Thill was named the Great Rivers Conference MVP this season. He was a conference champion, state qualifier and he holds the school’s pin record of just seven seconds as well as being the team’s captain for 4 years.

Thill has also been a varsity track star since his freshman season where he was named to the All-Conference team this season.

In football, Thill finished with over 2,000 yards rushing and he scored over 20 touchdowns in the past two seasons, he was All-Conference the past two seasons and was a team captain this year.

A crowd of over 400 attended yesterday’s event.

Kerry Rodd can be reached at kerry@northlandsportsonline.com