Asher bestowed Paul Cross Award

With the inability to have a formal postseason awards ceremony due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, Shelbyville High School’s athletic department recently announced winter sports award winners via social media.

Now over 100 years old, the Paul Cross Award is the most prestigious honor for a Shelbyville High School athlete. First awarded in 1920 to Morris Hogue, the Paul Cross Award honors a high achieving student-athlete in the boys basketball program.

Shelbyville senior Luke Asher is this year’s recipient. Asher carries a 4.3 grade point average, is involved in National Honor Society, and is ranked in the top 15 of his graduating class. On the hardwood, Asher was the only Golden Bear selected All-Hoosier Heritage Conference First Team this past season after leading his team in scoring (15.1 ppg), rebounding (5.6 rpg) and assists (2.7 apg).

Asher is the son of Brian and Lori Asher. Brian Asher was a Paul Cross recipient twice, in 1992 and 1993.

The Rotary Award winner for the girls basketball program is senior Makayla Terrell.

Terrell is a four-year member of both the girls basketball and track and field programs, and was named captain of both squads. She was Student Council vice-president for three years and is the Senior Council president this year. She started the DCA club and is part of the Earth club and Spanish club. She has been on the Superior Honor Roll for two years and will be receiving an academic letter for her grades.

In the summer of 2019, Terrell was one of 60 girls selected to attend a conference in New York called Black Girls Lead.

Upon graduation, she will attend Indiana University in Bloomington to study Exercise Science.

The wrestling team’s Rotary Award winner is Jordan Vinson.

This past season, Vinson’s finished runner-up in his weight class at the highly competitive Connersville Invitational and he became the first Golden Bear wrestler to win a Hoosier Heritage Conference title. Vinson also was a semistate qualifier in 2020.

The girls swimming Rotary Award winner is already the most decorated girls swimmer in Golden Bear history. Grace Lux, a sophomore, is a two-time state qualifier who holds several program records.

Lux has had a profound impact on the program. As a team, each swimmer and diver was asked to rate each of their teammates with a scale of one to five on the following criteria: citizenship, sportsmanship, discipline, training, teamwork, and attitude. She was first in every category except one, where she tied for first.

This past season, Lux bested school records in the 100-yard freestyle and 100 butterfly, won a Hoosier Heritage Conference championship in the 200 individual medley, and became the program’s first sectional champion in over 20 years in the 100 breaststroke.

Tyler Harker is the boys swimming Rotary Award winner.

Once in the shadows of more accomplished swimmers, Harker broke out with new confidence built from hard work in the offseason. He was rated by his teammates as tops in discipline and second in training, which paid off with career personal records in every event he swam before the Christmas break. He had a pair of top five finishes at the conference championship meet.

Harker closed out the season as one of a small group of swimmers to be in the Golden Bear Top Ten for every single individual swimming event.

In the classroom, Harker is ranked in the top 10 of his graduating class.