Senior selected for athlete of the year

By Nick Arnold, Managing Editor

Every year, Huntsville Hospital selects one athlete of the year, and this year’s athlete was senior Anna Fiorucci.

The athlete of the year is selected from all of the athlete of the week winners throughout the 2015-2016 school year, which Fiorucci won in November. Out of the 32 athlete of the week winners, Fiorucci received this award that came with a $1,000 scholarship.

“[I did not expect this] at all. I didn’t really train for this season as well as I normally do, so I did not think I was going to do very well, but I pushed myself and did better than I expected. There were so many great candidates and I didn’t think I was going to get it. I was very appreciative and thankful for it and humbled to be chosen,” Fiorucci said.

Although Fiorucci did not expect this honor, her tennis coach Ethan Richardson thinks that this was an honor that she is qualified for and deserves.

“[It is] very exciting and [she is] worthy of it. She has put in a lot of effort in the past six years. She has done a lot of extracurricular work and a lot of stuff outside of school hours. It is a good honor for her and also a good honor for the school,” Richardson said.

Fiorucci has been on the tennis team since seventh grade and has been on varsity throughout all that time. Richardson has seen Fiorucci grow as a tennis player over the past six years.

“She has worked on her game and it has gotten better. She started playing varsity as a seventh grader and physically, she grew a lot from there to where she is now as a senior. Her game has gotten a lot better too and she is one of the better players in the state,” Richardson said.

Fiorucci has always been talented in tennis, and, according to Richardson, has been one of the best players in north Alabama as long as she has been on the team.

“I’d say it is a combination of everything she as done in the past six years. I think it is a culmination of everything she has done, probably in her whole career, more than anything that happened in just this one year,” Richardson said.