Awards Night 2024
PPTC held its annual Awards Night on Friday, March 15th. Once again Awards Night was held at Stitch Bar & Blues. It was an unseasonably warm night and extra warm for PPTC’s Awards Night that is usually held in February, but this year was held in March. As with every year the night was filled with excitement and camaraderie.
Dylan Wells (he/him) served as this year’s host. With some opening remarks, After the award of the running related awards (Runners of the Year, Masters Runners of the Year, Ultra Runners of the Year), the Bob Mueller Award and the Most Inspirational award were announced. This year, I was honored to receive the Bob Mueller Award as the first female to receive this award. We then had a break for dinner.
Dinner was a buffet that included vegan and gluten free options, capped off with cupcakes (again with vegan and gluten free options, but not labeled, so eat at your own risk). With drinks flowing (non-alcholic sodas and seltzers for many in this running crowd getting ready to run the NYC Half), the presentation of awards continued.
The remaining awards were all awards voted on by our members. There were some highlights in this second half of the awards presentations. The awards committee pulled off a surprise presentation of the award for Outstanding Single Contribution to Evy Barnett (she/her), who was a member of the awards committee! Apparently there were two threads of emails with Evy receiving the emails where Clark McCaskill (he/they) was shown as the winner of the award for Outstanding Single Contribution and everyone else receiving those emails and ones showing Evy as the winner. It was quite a surprise to Evy when her name was announced as winner and tears of appreciation and surprise rained down from her eyes.
The award for Volunteer of the Year was awarded to Blair Smith (she/her) who moved to Australia earlier this year. She joined in the celebrations via FaceTime. While this was probably nice for Blaire, for the audience present at Stitch, it could be described at best as awkward and confusing. Congratulations, Blair, just come back to Brooklyn already
On to the final award for the evening - the President’s Award. This year’s President’s Award was awarded by PPTC President Crystal Cun (she/her) to Doug Olney (he/him) who has volunteered his services as PPTC’s treasurer for decades. Congratulations, Doug!
While the awards presentations were over, the party went on. We caught up with our friends and teammates and chatted about NYC Half goals or other spring race plans. We even talked about our lives outside of running, imagine that!
If you missed this year’s Awards Night, we hope you can make it to next year’s. A big thanks to the ad hoc Awards Committee and the Nominating Committee. Consider joining next year’s Awards Committee and Nominating Committee.
2024 Awards Night Winners
Runners of the year
Sigrid Wolfram- Female Runner of the Year
Lexi Nastos - Male Runner of the Year
Julian Barlow - Non-binary Runner of the Year
Masters runners of the Year
Nora Carroll - Female Masters Runner of the Year
Christopher Swain - Male Masters Runner of the Year
Chris Burris - Non-binary Runner of the Year
Ultra runners of the year
Katie Claiborne - Female Ultra Runner of the Year
Dave McGrath - Male Ultra Runner of the Year
NYRR 2nd Place Non-Binary Team
at the 2023 TCS NYC Marathon
Julian Barlow
Christopher Burris
Dame Lewis
Bob Mueller award
Linda Chan
Most inspirational
Thomas Nam
Best Team supporter
Murray Rosenblith
Outstanding single contribution
Evy Barnett
Most Improved
Michael Ring
Comeback runner of the year
Angela Workoff
New Member of the Year
Krishna Patel
Volunteer of the year
Blair Smith
President’s Award
Doug Olney
Text by: Linda S. Chan (she/her)
Produced by: Linda S. Chan
Photos by: Linda S. Chan
Slide show by: Awards Committee
PPTC is a diverse and supportive team. We want to celebrate the diversity of our club and membership. We welcome and encourage everyone to share their stories with us.