CANTON — Section 10’s premier athletes received some advice on how to succeed in college from a good source at the Watertown Daily Times third annual All-North Team Sports Banquet on Wednesday night at the Best Western Hotel.
Instead of a coach speaking, as had been the case the first two years, the athletes heard from someone not much older than them, Clarkson University women’s hockey co-captain Savannah Harmon, who will be a senior this fall.
Harmon helped lead Clarkson to its second national championship in four years this past spring.
She was the women’s ECAC Hockey Defenseman of the Year, and she scored the game-winning goal in Clarkson’s 3-0 win over Wisconsin to claim the national title.
A main point Harmon stressed to the athletes was that trophies and championships are great, but the experience of being part of a team is greater.
“I have found that my love of hockey and the Clarkson University Golden Knights family, goes far beyond what we do when we are just wearing a jersey,” Harmon said. “I am able to look back and realize that the rest of my life is not altered by the games we won or lost, but the hours and days spent on the bus with our teammates, distracting ourselves from the fact that we have three more hours on the windy Adirondack roads. The minutes spent before games, kicking around a soccer ball, singing and dancing to our pre-game pump-up songs, the high-fives that our smallest fans give us on our way to the ice, and the energy that surrounds the rink when our team scores a goal.
“If there is one piece of advice I can give to all the athletes in this room, it’s to hold your accomplishments, medals and trophies tight, but hold your teammates, your friends and your family and all the members you build along the way tighter. These are the pieces of your sports that you will carry with you for the rest of your life.”
One boys hockey player with NCAA Division I aspirations who heard Harmon’s speech was St. Lawrence Central junior Drew Rose.
“Her personal experiences about what she has to go through and how much work she put in to get where she is today,” said Rose, when asked about what he learned from the speech.
Another athlete listening to Harmon’s talk was Heuvelton senior Paige McCormick, who will be in a similar position this fall as she heads to Massachusetts-Amherst to play NCAA Division I women’s basketball.
“She has some very good points and it was great to hear her advice,” McCormick said. “I’m a little bit more prepared for moving in next week.”
McCormick had a memorable senior year. She was on a Section 10 championship team in every sport she played, won a state Class D championship for a third straight year in basketball and pitched in the state Class D championship game in softball.
The teams McCormick played on this year, including Ogdensburg Free Academy’s volleyball team in the fall, combined for 62-5 records.
She was named the Times Section 10 girls Athlete of the Year and enjoyed herself Wednesday, dining at a table with St. Regis Falls’ Madison Austin and Hammond’s Paige Frisina, two athletes she competed against in Section 10 title games this year.
“It’s really nice to get to visit the other athletes,” McCormick said. “Most of the time when you are playing against them you don’t really get to speak to them and get to know them.”
The boys athlete of the year was Ogdensburg Free Academy senior Joey Dalton, who led the Blue Devils to the state Class C title game in football, played on a division championship team in basketball and was on a Section 10 Class B championship team in baseball.