TAMPA – Katherine Booth of Lake Mary High School and Ryan Truchelut of Trinity Preparatory School (Winter Park) were named the 2004 FHSAA Female and Male Scholar-Athletes of the Year at the 10th Annual Florida High School Athletic Association Academic All-State Awards Banquet held tonight at the Wyndham Westshore Hotel in Tampa.
The two students – among the 24 chosen to the 2004 FHSAA Academic All-State Team – received a $2500 scholarship and commemorative trophy in addition to the $500 award and medallion for being selected to the team. The Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award is generally regarded as the most prestigious award the Association confers upon a student-athlete.
Booth finished her high school career with a 4.0 cumulative unweighted grade point average. She earned varsity letters in cross country and track & field her junior and senior years. Booth will attend Yale University in New Haven, studying bioengineering.
In addition to being a dedicated athlete, Booth is a National Merit Finalist and was a member of the JETS engineering competition team that placed second nationally. She scored 1580 on the SAT and 35 on the ACT. Booth was a member of the state runner-up cross country team her freshman and sophomore years. She is a Presidential Scholar and was a state finalist for the Wendy's High School Heisman award. Booth has also earned a certificate of merit from the Society of Women Engineers.
Truchelut finished his high school career as valedictorian of his 125-member senior class. He earned varsity letters in cross country and track & field his junior and senior years. Truchelut will study physics and political science at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J.
Truchelut, a National Merit Scholar award winner and a Presidential Scholar, scored 1590 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). He was the only student out of 16,000 tested in June 2003 to score a perfect 36 on the ACT. Truchelut was a member of the state championship 4x800-meter relay team at the 2002 and 2003 FHSAA Florida Track & Field Finals, and was the district and regional 800-meter run champion twice. He was a state finalist for the Wendy's High School Heisman award in 2004.
An interest in meteorology earned Truchelut the title of "Class Meteorologist" at Trinity Prep. His original research paper on "The effects of Global Warming on Tropical Cyclones in the North Atlantic" won in the national "Watching Earth Change" competition for NASA's Student Involvement Program. Truchelut was also the AAA High School Travel Challenge Florida state champion.
Last April, 24 student-athletes – 12 boys and 12 girls – were chosen from among more than 240 qualified nominees from the Association's 609 member high schools as the 2004 FHSAA Academic All-State Team. To be eligible for selection to the team, a student must be a graduating senior, must have a cumulative unweighted grade point average of 3.5 or better, and must have earned a varsity letter in at least two different sports during each of their junior and senior years.
The Florida High School Athletic Association is the governing body for interscholastic athletics in Florida. It has a membership of 700 middle, junior and senior high schools.