The Midwest Croquet Association announced the annual President's Awards for the 2016 season at the Annual General Meeting Held in Kansas City, Missouri this past Saturday. The winners are:
JR PLAYER OF THE YEAR: Gabe Airrington
Honorable Mention: Bryce Millican
Arrington earned this honor for the second year in a row after taking the Silver Division Points race for 2016 and winning two tournaments on the year. Millican earned honorable mention for a strong perfomance in limited play during his first year. Over seven games, Millican had the second highest average wickets per game in Silver with 20.71 per game on 145 points for the season.
ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Bryce Millican
Millican was the clear top performer for true rookie players in 2016 and managed a 3-4 record in a competitive Silver Division.
MOST IMPROVED PLAYER: Justin Marciniak
Honorable Mention: Jason Johnson, Jodi Adams
The MCA saw several players show improvement in 2016. Jason Johnson went 5-8 in the Pro Division for a seventh place finish. The five wins shows that he may be ready to snag a title in 2017. shows steady improvement each year in my opinion. Jodi Adams had an interesting season in Gold and showed a lot of perseverance to keep battling when it looked like Steve Jackson had a comfortable lead in the overall points race. She was always right there and finished the season with an exclamation point with the MCA Gold Championship and Points Series win. Both Adams and Johnson are honorable mention in this category. Our winner though was Justin Marciniak as he notched a 17-4 record and 272 points on the season after going 3-7 with 81 points in 2015. He also won three of the five Silver Divsion tournaments including back-to-back wins to finish the season.
RECRUITER: Renee Potter
Honorable Mention: Deborah and Ron Millican
While Deborah and Ron Millican have been the biggest recruiters overall this decade for the MCA, we gave the edge for 2016 for this first-time award to Renee Potter for recruiting Shari Cullinan and Patrick Fagan to the MCA. The Millican's did match that by bringing in Ryan and Bryce Millican this year, but the tiebreaker went to Potter as the award was her suggestion.
GROUNDSKEEPER: Bill Berg
Berg earned this award for his work in developing two additional courts for his own event and also building the best true 9W court on our circuit.
MEDIA/MARKETING AWARD: Darin Watson
Darin Watson was named our Media Award winner for taking over the weekly Kansas City Croquet Club newsletter to encourage players to attend the Saturday game at the Cleveland Croquet Club and Thursday GC at Eagles' Landing Golf Course in Belton.
OFF-THE-COURT: Bill Berg
Honorable Mention: Matt Griffith
Besides introducing a new event for 2016 with the Cleveland Open and the huge amount of work that goes into that, Berg also donated all of the the net proceeds from the event to the MCA. In addition, he continued to work with the city of Belton in the offseason in an effort to put together a joint effort with the MCA to get a set of courts in Belton.
Griffith was given honorable mention for bringing the USCA’s Midwest Regional to the Kansas City area for the first time ever. That also includes building a relationship with the National Golf Club in Parkville, Missouri to utilize a driving range tee for two additional courts for the event.