A full lineup of champions will be honored at the 73rd CYO Club of Champions Tribute and Dinner on Wednesday aboard the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.
This year the annual tribute event will honor Rex Ryan, the head coach of the New York Jets, with the John V. Mara Sportsman of the Year Award. Ryan was named head coach of the Jets in January after 10 seasons with the Baltimore Ravens. In 2006 he earned the NFL Assistant Coach of the Year award from Pro Football Weekly and the Pro Football Writers Association.
Louis J. Capelli, chairman and CEO of Sterling Bancorp, will be the Gold Medal recipient, and Timothy Cohane and Dan Doyle, both with the Institute for International Sport, will be awarded the Terence Cardinal Cooke Humanitarian Award.
Capelli has been an active supporter the Catholic Youth Organization as well as the efforts of Catholic Charities to provide help and create hope for the neediest New Yorkers. He organized the Sterling National Bank Food Drive to benefit Catholic Charities' Emergency Food Program, which provides food for the growing number of New Yorkers affected by the economic downturn.
Cohane, named by The Sporting News as "among the most influential people in the arts," founded the Institute of International Sport in 1986 and has created National Sportsmanship Day, the World Scholar-Athlete Games in partnership with the United Nations, the New England Sports Hall of Fame, the Center for Sports Leadership, the Hall of Fame Press, and the upcoming 2011 World Youth Peace Summit.
Cohane, an attorney, was a highly decorated U.S. Naval officer, educator and college sports coach. He was named New York Metropolitan Coach of the Year and Conference Coach of Year in 1990.
All proceeds from this event will support CYO programs, which serve thousands of children and young people. Catholic and non-Catholic, throughout the Archdiocese of New York.
The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum is located at Pier 86 at West 46th Street in New York.
About CYO and Catholic Charities
CYO, a division of Catholic Charities, reaches out to more than 27,000 youth of the New York Archdiocese through its Youth Ministry programs and retreat centers, hundreds of local sports programs and cultural activities, and summer camps and community centers. In offering this variety of spiritual and recreational growth opportunities, the people of CYO join together to help promote lives of promise and hope.
The Catholic Charities, a federation of approximately 90 agencies and programs located throughout the 10 counties of the Archdiocese of New York, helps solve the problems of New Yorkers in need, non-Catholics and Catholics alike. Catholic Charities provides help and creates hope by protecting and nurturing children and youth, strengthening families and resolving crises, feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless, supporting the physically and emotionally challenged and welcoming and integrating immigrants and refugees.
