The Athena Award goes to 1 senior girl from each participating school, and Bloomington's 2 picks were hard to argue with. Allie Sheehan finished her Kennedy softball career with 122 hits, the most in program history. Avery Rich wrapped up a 4-sport-season run at Jefferson by finishing second at the state Nordic ski meet.
Bloomington Public Schools announced the 2 winners on March 11, and the district said they would be honored at the Minneapolis Athena Banquet on May 1.
Rich ran cross country and track and skied Nordic for Jefferson. Her runner-up finish at the state ski meet in February came a year after she placed 9th as a junior. Along the way she was named program MVP twice and earned 4 All-Metro West Conference honors and 2 academic All-State honors. She captained the cross country team for 2 years and ran in 4 state meets, collecting 3 All-Conference honors, 1 all-state honor and 1 academic all-conference nod. Track added 1 all-conference honor and 2 more academic all-state awards. Next up is Bates College, where she plans to ski and major in environmental engineering.
Sheehan played 4 sports for Kennedy — volleyball, basketball, softball and flag football — and captained the first 3. She earned multiple all-conference honors in volleyball, made first-team all-section on defense in basketball, and played quarterback for Bloomington's cooperative flag football program in its first 2 seasons. In softball this spring she had 24 hits in 18 games on her way to the career record.
Her resume off the field is just as full. The district said she earned 4 academic letters, was named flag football quarterback of the year, was nominated for the ExCEL award and received a Bloomington Public Schools Senior Achievement award. She's also in the National Honor Society and Student Government.
"It's such an honor because this is such a long-lived award that even people in my community are like, 'My daughter got that,'" Sheehan said.
Her softball coach, Alex O'Connor, pointed past the numbers. "She's a fantastic human first," O'Connor said. "That speaks volumes."
Sheehan will play softball at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. She plans to major in human biology with an emphasis in exercise science and work toward a career in occupational therapy.
