The 16th Annual Coach Wooden Citizenship Cup, an award given to the most outstanding role models among athletes, has announced collegiate honorees for its 2020 award ceremony to be held in Atlanta at a date this spring to be announced. Bob Ryan, the famed sportswriter for the Boston Globe and analyst for ESPN, will serve as the Master of Ceremonies.

Founded by Athletes for a Better World (ABW), a non-profit organization committed to changing the culture of American sports, the Wooden Cup is unique in that it is open to athletes in all high school, collegiate, Olympic, and professional sports. Annual nominations are open to every division and conference in college sports, and to athletes in public and private high schools across the country in partnership with the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association.
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Athletes for a Better World (ABW) and The National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA) have formed a partnership to annually recognize one male and one female national NIAAA scholarship winner as automatic recipients of the prestigious Coach Wooden Citizenship Cup.  These two high school athletes will join one collegiate and one professional recipient each year as exemplary role models of the ABW Code for Living.  The recipients of the high school class of 2019 are Natalya Blair Newsome and Max David Friedman who will receive the Coach Wooden Citizenship Cup in the spring of 2020.  ABW Executive Director Brad Catherman and NIAAA officials celebrated this achievement with the two recipients at the Opening General Session of the National Athletic Directors Conference conducted on December 14, 2019 in National Harbor, Maryland.
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Steward Cink, former British Open Champion and five-time U.S. Ryder Cup team member, received the 15th Annual Coach Wooden Citizenship Cup along with collegiate and high school division athletes at a banquet ceremony in the Infiniti Club at SunTrust Park in Atlanta on April 25, 2019. Nathan Clayberg of Drake University was the collegiate recipient of the award. In partnership with the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association, the high school division recipients were Sarah Rauch of Grayslake North High School, Grayslake, Illinois, and Evan Gwozdz of Middleboro High School, Middleboro, Massachusetts. Bob Ryan, the famed sportswriter for the Boston Globe and analyst for ESPN, served as the Master of Ceremonies.
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Stewart Cink was an All-American on the Georgia Tech golf team from 1993-1995, was named ACC Player of the Year in 1995 and was on its academic honor roll from 1992-1993.  He was the recipient of the Fred Haskins Award in 1995, given to the most outstanding collegiate golfer in NCAA Division I, and the Jack Nicklaus Player of the Year award.  He was inducted into the Georgia Tech Athletic Hall of Fame in 2005.

Cink has been a full-time player on the PGA TOUR since 1997, playing more than 500 PGA TOUR events with six PGA TOUR victories during that 22-year-span, including the 2009 British Open at Turnberry.  Cink’s first PGA TOUR victory came in 1997 at the Travelers Championship, with additional victories at the 2000 RBC Heritage, 2004 RBC Heritage, 2004 World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, and 2008 Travelers Championship.  Cink’s British Open Championship win at Turnberry came in a playoff over five-time Open winner Tom Watson.  He’s also represented the United States on five Ryder Cup teams and four Presidents Cup teams.

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ATLANTA, GA (March 19, 2019) – The 15th Annual Coach Wooden Citizenship Cup, an award given to the most outstanding role models among athletes, has announced the professional, collegiate, and high school honorees for its 2019 award ceremony, to be held April 25 at SunTrust Park’s Infiniti Club in Atlanta.  Georgia Tech alumnus and pro golfer Stewart Cink will be the professional recipient.  Bob Ryan, the famed sportswriter for the Boston Globe and analyst for ESPN, will serve as the Master of Ceremonies.

Founded by Athletes for a Better World (ABW), a non-profit organization which celebrates the unselfish generosity of many participants in American sports, the Wooden Cup is unique in that it is open to all athletes in all high schools, college and professional sports. Annual nominations are open to every division and conference in college sports, and to athletes in public and private high schools across the country in partnership with the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association.  The Wooden Cup is becoming one of the most prestigious awards in all of sports. Previous professional recipients include Jack Nicklaus, Pat Summitt, Drew Brees, and Mia Hamm.
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ATLANTA, GA (February 15, 2019) – The 15th Annual Coach Wooden Citizenship Cup, an award given to the most outstanding role models among athletes, has announced collegiate honorees for its 2019 award ceremony to be held in Atlanta at a date this spring to be announced. Bob Ryan, the famed sportswriter for the Boston Globe and analyst for ESPN, will serve as the Master of Ceremonies.

Founded by Athletes for a Better World (ABW), a non-profit organization committed to changing the culture of American sports, the Wooden Cup is unique in that it is open to athletes in all high school, collegiate, Olympic, and professional sports. Annual nominations are open to every division and conference in college sports, and to athletes in public and private high schools across the country in partnership with the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association.
Read More »

ATLANTA (January 1, 2019) – Athletes for a Better World (ABW) and The National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA) have formed a partnership to annually recognize one male and one female national NIAAA scholarship winner as automatic recipients of the prestigious Coach Wooden Citizenship Cup. These two high school athletes will join one collegiate and one professional recipient each year as exemplary role models of the ABW Code for Living. The recipients of the high school class of 2018 are Sarah Rauch and Evan Gwozdz who will receive the Coach Wooden Citizenship Cup in the spring of 2019. ABW Executive Director Brad Catherman and NIAAA officials celebrated this achievement with the two recipients at the Opening General Session of the National Athletic Directors Conference conducted on December 15, 2018 in San Antonio, Texas.
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ATLANTA (April 26, 2018) – Johann Koss, a four time Olympic Gold medalist and Founder of Right to Play, and Ashley Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania each received the 14th Annual Coach Wooden Citizenship Cup at Atlanta’s Cobb Galleria Centre Wednesday night.  In the high school division, in partnership with the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association, Cups were awarded to Hope Baldwin, Hackett Catholic Prep in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Ethan Shuster of Shelton High School in Shelton, Connecticut. The Cup, in the words of Athletes for a Better World’s founder, Fred Northup, is “not for the best athlete, or the best student, but for the best person in the world of sports.” Previous recipients, including Jack Nicklaus, Mia Hamm, Cal Ripken, Peyton Manning, Pat Summitt and others, have made the Cup one of the most prestigious awards in sports, given its emphasis on character and its openness to athletes in all sports.
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The professional recipient, Johann Koss, is a four time Gold Medalist, the Founder of Right to Play, and an international humanitarian.

Koss made his Olympic debut at the 1992 Winter Olympics, finishing seventh in the 5,000m, five days after undergoing surgery because of an inflamed pancreas. He would recover to win gold in the 1,500m (by only 0.04 seconds over his countryman Ådne Søndrål) and silver in the 10,000m (behind Dutch skater Bart Veldkamp).

In 1994, the final year of his speed skating career, Koss also gained fame outside the speed skating world by winning three gold medals at the 1994 Winter Olympics in his native Norway, winning all races in new world records, two of which would remain unbeaten until the clap skate era. For his performance, he was named Sports Illustrated magazine’s Sportsman of the Year in 1994, together with Bonnie Blair. In addition, he received the Oscar Mathisen Award for speed skating three times: in 1990, 1991, and 1994.
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