Yuma County celebrates top athletes at largest sports banquet yet
Yuma County’s biggest sports banquet ever put its top athletes and coaches in one room at the Civic Center, led by Judd Thrower, Kameron Potter and Sabrina Anaya.
The biggest sports banquet the Yuma Sun has ever hosted turned the Yuma Civic Center into a countywide showcase for Yuma County’s athletic pipeline, with Yuma Catholic baseball coach Judd Thrower, Gila Ridge High School’s Kameron Potter and Kofa High School’s Sabrina Anaya among the night’s top honorees.
Thrower was named Coach of the Year after guiding the Shamrocks to their third straight state championship appearance, a run that underscored how much weight sustained program success still carries across the county. Potter earned Male Athlete of the Year honors, while Anaya was selected as Female Athlete of the Year, putting two more familiar names from the Yuma-area high school landscape at the center of the celebration. The banquet recognized athletes, coaches and teams whose performances stretched across the school year and across multiple campuses, giving the county a public stage for work that usually gets measured in wins, standings and postseason brackets.
Sports Editor Mac Friday said the event matters because it gives local athletes the recognition they deserve for the work they put in all year. He also said, “This is the most special day we have all year,” while crediting Yuma Sun staff and the Yuma Rotary Club for making the celebration possible. Friday said the paper hopes to keep expanding the banquet in future years so it can better recognize the full sports season and more Yuma-area athletes.
For the Rotary Club of Yuma, the banquet fit squarely within a service tradition that has celebrated excellence on and off the field since 1987. The club describes it as one of its most popular fundraising events, alongside the Walt Kammann Sausage Fry and appearances at the Yuma County Fair. A Yuma County Chamber of Commerce profile says Yuma Rotary was established in 1937 and meets Tuesdays from noon to 1 p.m. at the Yuma Civic Center, a detail that helps explain why the venue has become such a natural home for a countywide sports celebration.
The banquet also reflected a larger awards ecosystem already familiar to Yuma-area sports followers. A 2023 KYMA report showed that all-region baseball honors are tracked by category, including player, offensive player, defensive player and coach of the year, with the banquet serving as a public capstone to that broader postseason recognition. For families, coaches and schools, the night was another reminder that in Yuma County, athletic success is not just recorded on a scoreboard. It is built, repeated and publicly celebrated.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
