On May 4th, La Sierra high school hosted an athletic banquet in the performing arts center. I interviewed the athletic director, Blake Hypock, regarding the athletic banquet. He talked about his thoughts on the event. 

Lay’ani Taylor: Describe the planning process for the Athletic Banquet? 

Blake Hypock: So it’s an annual banquet where we honor our scholar athletes, every team’s mvp, and our male and female athlete, and our sportsman, sportswoman. So I have to go through and I have to run reports on every single student athlete from their current season and all their GPAs to see if they are scholar athletes. I have to go through and send out communication to all of our head coaches so that they can vote on our major award winners, being our, sportsman, sportswoman, male and female athlete, and our coach of the year and then coaches provide me with their specific team MVPs so we can make them certificates. As far as any other planning we had to create invitations based on the list that we pulled and we have to send those invitations out electronically, print and make programs, print and make those invitations and secure all the seats.

Taylor: Why do you believe the athletic banquet is important? 

Hypock: It’s a great opportunity to celebrate our student athlete. It’s tough being a student athlete juggling school, academics, home life, and athletics. So it’s a great way to honor you guys and all the hard work that you guys put in over the year, all your accomplishments, and all the success that you guys have had during the season of your sport.

Taylor: What stood out the most to you during the banquet?

Hypock: Just the support from parents and families to come and attend and celebrate all of our student athletes. It was a great mix to see not only team MVPs but all the scholar athlete parents and the major award winner parents and families and the excitement that everybody had for the event in general. 

Taylor: In your opinion how did the event go?

Hypock: I thought it went really well, we had a really good turnout. The dinner portion at the beginning, prior to the ceremony went really well. It was well attended and it got a lot of good feedback so I think it went really well. 

Taylor: What will you remember most about this year’s banquet? 

Hypock: I will remember our coach of the year. He was very deserving, Coach Rob, and I don’t think he was expecting it at all. So it was awesome to kind of see his excitement and his passion come through at the end of the evening and kind of overwhelm him and really enjoy the experience of being named coach of the year.

Taylor: What are you most proud of?

Hypock: I think everything went pretty smoothly. We kept it to about an hour. The flow was pretty good. Again we had a good turnout. I’m proud of the whole team that helped. I had Mrs. Salinas help, I had Ms. Francine help, they helped with all the invitations and the programs and the awards and the certificates. So it was a full team effort and I was just proud of how smoothly it went based on the help from the team. Mr. Sage and Dr. Cabeza as well. And Mrs. Kolonics. 

Taylor: Is there anything you’d like to improve on for next year’s banquet?

Hypock: There’s nothing to improve on I don’t think. I mean it all went pretty smoothly.