all-Herald section

The Spring All-Herald teams were announced on Monday in a special section. I'd like to thank a large number of people who made the section possible, especially the athletes who took time off during their busy schedules to come in for a photo or send us one.
As usual, it is truly a pleasure to watch all the top athletes come into our office. We get to chat casually with them and get to know their personalities a bit. I won't say who our favorites are, but suffice it to say every time a group of 100 high schoolers spend some time in the office, there are some funny stories to go along with it. This year, a couple of them spent so much time chatting, they might be invited to our photographer's wedding in a couple of years. It's like they are close friends.
I was very happy to announce Sarah Sideranko and Andrew Perbeck as our athletes of the season. I've followed both for three years now and they are truly gracious and deserving. Wethersfield baseball coach Mark Bagdasarian was a worthy winner on the coach's side of things, in what was the most difficult decision for the staff in the nine award selections we made this past year.
We are always looking for ways to expand the All-Herald program, so if you have any ideas please pass them along. There may be better ways for us to honor the top athletes and coaches in our area and we are certainly open to exploring them. I can say that the first thing we must seek to do next year is honor our lacrosse players. When the All-Herald program began, lacrosse was a new sport at the high school level, and we had only a few small programs. Now, there are several veteran programs and the top players deserve to be honored.

In recap, here are our player and coach of the season award winners from the fall to the spring.
Fall 2007
Male athlete - Nate Pagan (Newington football)
Female athlete - Desiree Pina (Plainville soccer)
Coach - Sal Penta (Southington girls soccer)
Winter 2007-2008
Male athlete - Spencer Noon (Farmington basketball)
Female athlete - Symone Roberts (New Britain basketball)
Coach - Lisa Mandeville (Plainville girls basketball)
Spring 2008
Male athlete - Andrew Perbeck (Plainville baseball)
Female athlete - Sarah Sideranko (New Britain golf)
Coach - Mark Bagdasarian (Wethersfield baseball)

Good luck to all graduated seniors who will be starting at the next level. Off the top of my head, Nate Pagan, Dan Carducci, Des Pina, Allie Munson, Katie Matthews, Athalia Smith, Chantaul Smith, Kevin Josephson, David Soltis, Alex Bulger, Hami Kara, Lena Cantone, Jaime Rasmussen, Brendan McGourn, Mariusz Kurzatkowski, Molly McKinnon and a bunch of others have bright college careers ahead of them. We'll miss watching all of them.