Coupeville Sports

    The leaders of the pack, Nick Streubel (left) and Caleb Valko (right) with Wolf football coach Tony Maggio. (Rebecca Lord photo)

Breeanna Messner (left) and one of next year’s strongest contenders for Athlete Supreme, Amanda Fabrizi. (Robert Bishop photo)

You knew Caleb Valko wasn’t going down without a fight.

But not even a considerable rally late in the game from Team Valko, which marshaled its voting bloc in the late hours Thursday night, could upend Nick Streubel, who started strong and finished even stronger.

By the time the week-long voting for our inaugural 2012-2013 Athlete Supreme had reached the finish line Friday morning, 429 votes had been cast, with nearly 200 coming after I went to bed Thursday night.

What had been a two-person battle between Streubel, a junior who starred on the Coupeville High School football, boys’ basketball and track teams and Breeanna Messner, the school’s only four-sport (volleyball, cheer, basketball, softball) athlete turned into a three-way tussle.

Valko, a senior captain on the football and basketball squads, rallied his troops hard and he shot past Messner and made a run at Streubel, pulling within three votes.

Then The Big Hurt surged, spurred by a campaign led by big sis Amanda Streubel, and crushed everyone in sight, garnering 40.56% of the vote total in a 12-athlete field.

There was actually a 13th option, to vote for Other, which didn’t work the way I thought it would, as the results didn’t actually show the names people typed in for those votes. Which would have been awkward if Other had won.

But, in the end, NO ONE beats Team Streubel. NO ONE.

Final vote totals:

Streubel (174)
Valko (111)
Messner (72)
Bessie Walstad (13)
Makana Stone (12)
Madison Tisa McPhee (10)
Other (10)
Jake Tumblin (6)
Aaron Curtin (5)
Austin Fields (5)
Hailey Hammer (5)
Ben Etzell (4)
Christine Fields (2)