Greater New Orleans Amateur Athlete of the Month

The Greater New Orleans Sports Awards Committee began in 1957 when James Collins spearheaded a group of sports journalists to form a sports awards committee to immortalize local sports history. For 13 years, the committee honored local athletes each month. In 1970, the Sugar Bowl stepped in to sponsor and revitalize the committee, leading to the 1971 creation of the Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame, honoring 10 legends from the Crescent City in its first induction class. While adding the responsibility of selecting Hall of Famers, the committee has continued to recognize the top amateur athlete in the Greater New Orleans area each month – the honors enter their 62nd year in 2018. To be eligible, an athlete must be a native of the greater New Orleans area or must compete for a team in the metropolitan region. Each of the monthly award winners are honored in the summer at the Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Ceremony, hosted by the Allstate Sugar Bowl.

After a dominant sprinting performance at the ESPN AAU Club National Track Championship, Raven Nunnery, who will be a junior at John Curtis, was selected as the Greater New Orleans Amateur Athlete of the Month for July. Nunnery defeated 200 competitors, including the Georgia and Alabama state champions, to capture the 15/16-year-old 200-meter national championship with a time of 24.2 seconds in mid-July at the Disney Sports Complex in Orlando. She also won medals with fourth-place finishes in the 100-meter dash (12.12 seconds) and the 4×400-meter relay and then teamed up with three other New Orleans runners to take third-place in the sprint-medley relay (two participants run 200 meters, one runs 400 meters and the final leg is 800 meters). In mid-June, Nunnery won the 100- and 200-meter dashes at the Louisiana Governor’s meet held at Tad Gormley Stadium. This past spring, she became the first female from New Orleans in over 20 years to win both the 100- and 200-meter races at the Allstate Sugar Bowl/LHSAA Class 5A State Championship.

Nunnery earned the honor over six other exceptional athletes:

• Adam Atkins, a rising senior at East Jefferson High School, won the boys classic division championship at the 2019 edition of the Scratch Match Games at Circle Bowl in Baton Rouge on July 28.
• Mariia Borodii, who will be a junior at Xavier University, won three titles (women’s singles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles) at the Midwestern Tennis Association’s MID-TAC Championships in Indianapolis July 4-6.
• Kayla Giardina posted a perfect 4-0 record with a 0.00 ERA in 20 innings of action to lead the Eastbank team to the Little League Softball Southwestern Regional Championship in Waco, Texas, from July 24-28. The team will make a second straight trip to the Little League Softball World Series scheduled for August 7-14 in Portland, Ore.
• Emily Leitko, a sophomore-to-be with the Tulane volleyball team, earned a gold medal in women’s beach volleyball at the Pan American Maccabi Games which took place from July 5-15 in Mexico City.
• Adam Rodney, a 34-year old graduate of St. Aug, represented the United States at the Fencing World Championship in Budapest from July 15-23. He is ranked fourth in the nation in the epee.

Cameron Senior keyed a total team effort as the JPRD East team captured the Dixie Baseball 15U World Series Championship. He batted .476 in the five games of the World Series to go with a .633 on-base percentage and a .667 slugging percentage.