Information Provided By Southern New Hampshire
MANCHESTER, N.H. – Southern New Hampshire University men's cross country student-athletes Tyler Parks (Moultonborough, N.H.) and Mike Smith (Lynnfield, Mass.), the male winners of the 2009-10 NCAA Student-Athlete Sportsmanship Award, will receive their award and be honored on Saturday (October 2) during a ceremony at halftime of SNHU's 7:00 pm men's soccer game against Assumption College.
Presenting the award to Parks and Smith will be SNHU Director of Athletics Chip Polak, Northeast-10 Conference Commissioner Julie Ruppert, who is a member of the NCAA Committee on Sportsmanship and Ethical Conduct which awards the honor, and Teresa Smith from the NCAA national office in Indianapolis.
Prior to the ceremony, the pair will be honored with a reception in the lobby of the SNHU Academic Center starting at 6:00 pm. Current members and coaches of the men's and women's cross country team will be in attendance, and men's and women's cross country alumni are also invited to attend the reception as well as the ceremony.
On Saturday, October 10, 2009, Parks and Smith were competing for the SNHU men's cross country team at Boston's Franklin Park in the New England Championship when they came across an unconscious Boston University runner at approximately the 3.5 mile mark of the eight-kilometer course.
The pair stopped to assist the runner, who was face down, and after initial efforts to wake him by yelling at him, Parks and Smith took a hold of him. The runner regained consciousness and remembered his name, but could not remember where he was until the pair told him.
Each with one of the runner's arms over his shoulders, both Smith and Parks proceeded to carefully take the runner out of the woods to an area with more spectators and to the nearest medical tent. His legs were weak and he was unable to walk on his own, but the two escorted him out of the woods to find an ambulance pulling up in preparation to take the runner away.
The BU runner was running a time of 28 minutes for the five-mile course, so when Parks and Smith reached him at the 29-minute mark, they speculate the runner had been there for three to four minutes, and that possibly more than 100 runners had already passed the unconscious athlete.
The unconscious runner turned out to be fine, as he was suffering from dehydration.
As a result of their act, neither Parks nor Smith finished the race, leaving Southern New Hampshire with just five runners, the minimum required to post a team score.
