4/24/2015

Dear athletic director:

In Sunday's Register Star and online at rrstar.com, we will announce big changes regarding the annual NIC-10 All-Sports Banquet.

First off, it will no longer be called the NIC-10 All-Sports Banquet because we are now including athletes from the NUIC and Big Northern Conference. For the longest time, I felt it was unfair that so many great high school athletes from area schools that we cover were left out of the postseason celebration.

But because we are adding two more conferences, which means up to 27 more schools, we have to cut back in other ways. The potential for over 1,500 people is logistically impossible, much less accounting for the cost. So the banquet will no longer recognize the first-team all-conference athletes from each sport.

The new format is smaller and simpler. At the banquet, we will give awards for the top boys and girls sports coaches of the year in the NIC-10, NUIC and BNC. We will also honor the top male and female athlete from each of the three conferences. We will announce the coaching winners in advance, and at the same time announce the three finalists in each of the athlete awards (three finalists for NIC-10 female athlete of the year, three finalists for NIC-10 male athlete of the year, three finalists for NUIC female athlete of the year, etc.). All winners and nominees will be the guest of the Register Star (we'll pick up their dinner tab), while all others (friends, family, etc.) will need to pay for their reservations.

All reservations for the event will come through us. You and your athletic secretaries will no longer have to deal with ticket sales. We will have a hard and fast deadline to reserve a spot at the banquet so we can get an accurate count for food and not get stuck paying for dinners that do not get eaten.

We will also present the NIC-10 all-Sports trophy (the AD of the winning school will be notified in advance and will be our guest at the banquet) and we expect to also continue giving the 'Doc' Jaeger Award as well.

This year, we will not have a courageous athlete award, nor will we have a service award, but they may be resurrected for the future.

The banquet will be June 17 at Giovanni's. Our goal is to announce the coaching winners and athlete finalists by May 27, with June 10 serving as the deadline to reserve a spot at the banquet.

If you have any further questions, please email me or give me a call (815-987-1203).

Thank you

Randy Ruef

Sports editor

Rockford Register Star