USRowing is pleased to announce the winners of its 2006 Annual Awards, Executive Director Glenn Merry announced on Wednesday.
This year's recipients of the Julian Wolf Award, Ernestine Bayer Award, Clayton W. Chapman Award, John Carlin Service Award and Jack Kelly Award will be honored, along with the previously announced USRowing Athletes of the Year, on December 1 at the USRowing Annual Awards Reception in Portland, Ore. USRowing would like to congratulate all of the award winners and thank them for their contributions to the sport.
The Julian Wolf Award pays tribute to a referee for his or her contribution to rowing in the past year. This year's recipients are Kirsten and Howard Meisner. Computer software professionals by trade, the Meisners have made an extraordinary contribution to the referee community through their creation and development of the Referee Database System. The database was designed for rowing officials to track their work, post their availability, and for chief referees to indicate their needs for staffing individual events. The system has enabled referees to maintain a record of their work experience and provides detailed information to the referee commission concerning staffing requirements for officials throughout the country. Both Howard and Kirsten have been involved in the sport for more than 15 years. Howard began rowing in 1987 at Buckingham, Browne and Nichols in Cambridge, Mass., and became a licensed referee in 2000. Kirsten began rowing in 1991 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and became a licensed official in 1999. They have served on the Board of Directors for both the Carnegie Mellon University Rowing Club and Cincinnati Rowing Club. In addition to officiating at regattas across the country, they are active members of the Cincinnati rowing community, sculling competitively and assisting with the logistics for the annual East Fork Chase Race in Cincinnati.
Formerly called the Woman of the Year Award, the Ernestine Bayer Award is given in recognition of outstanding contributions to women's rowing. This year's recipient is Princeton University women's head coach Lori Dauphiny. She was named the 2006 Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association National Coach of the Year after leading Princeton to a historic 2006 season. Dauphiny's varsity eight went 14-0 in the regular season and recorded open-water victories at both the Eastern Sprints and NCAA Championships. A multiple-time national team assistant coach, Dauphiny will enter Princeton's 2007 season with a career record of 100-8.
The Clayton W. Chapman Award is presented annually to an individual who best emulates Mr. Chapman's 30-year stewardship of the Eastern Sprints and IRA Championship regattas and who consistently serves in a behind-the-scenes administrative role that has previously gone unrecognized. This year's winners are Eric and Deborah Stoll of Indianapolis Rowing Center. Eric joined IRC's staff in June of 1996 as its executive director. He serves as the junior women's coach and is responsible for organizing all regattas at Eagle Creek Park. Eric has served as regatta director for eight USRowing National Championships, as well as Indy's annual regattas including the Indianapolis Collegiate Invitational, Indianapolis High School Invitational and Head of the Eagle. Deborah, who works for IBM, is actively involved with IRC, primarily focusing on off-the-water activities. She manages the club's clothing sales, coordinates information for the newsletter and other communications, and works on recruiting new members. She also races with the masters program and hosts an occasional quad clinic to introduce learn-to-row graduates and sweep rowers to the joys of sculling. Eric and Deborah are graduates of Washington College and have two children, who are both collegiate rowers.
The John J. Carlin Award is given annually to an individual who has made a significant contribution and outstanding commitments in the sport of rowing. This year's winner is Chip Davis, publisher of Rowing News magazine. Davis founded The Independent Rowing News in 1994. Paying press bills with tips earned by waiting tables, Davis wrote and laid out each issue of the tabloid-sized newspaper on a used computer located in the bedroom he rented from a college teammate. Since 1994, Rowing News has grown into a full-color, glossy magazine with a professionally-staffed office and dozens of contributors from around the world.
The Jack Kelly Award is given to outstanding individuals who represent the ideals that Jack Kelly exemplified including superior achievement in rowing, service to amateur athletics and success in their chose profession, thereby serving as an inspiration to American rowers. This year's recipient is Andrew Sudduth. A two-time Olympic rower who won a silver medal at the 1984 Olympic Games, Sudduth died of pancreatic cancer on July 15 of this year at the age of 44. Sudduth was a member of eight U.S. National Teams between 1981 and 1990, winning silver in the eight at the 1984 Olympics and finishing sixth in the single sculls at the 1988 Olympics. He also won four medals at the world championships. Professionally, he helped develop computer technology that continues to be used by Internet providers today. From their early days, Sudduth worked on DHCP and DNS servers, which now help form the backbone of the Internet. At American Internet (AIC), he shared a patent for his help in inventing "self provisioning," which allows individuals to choose their own services, pay for them and connect to the Internet without human intervention on the side of the service provider. This technology is what brought AIC to the attention of Cisco and ultimately what led to the company's purchase of AIC. At Cisco, Sudduth continued to innovate, helping to define and develop its address management technology and products, as well as finding many innovative uses for DHCP and DNS servers. In addition, Sudduth is a historical figure in the history of the Internet. In 1988 while working in a computer lab at Harvard University, he circulated the first major warning regarding the infamous Internet Worm virus.