Sixty-five percent of eligible North Lake Tahoe Pop Warner football players and cheerleaders were honored this past Saturday night at the Regional Banquet in Sparks as 2012-2013 Regional Scholar Athletes and Scholastic All-Americans.

Each year the Pacific Northwest Region of Pop Warner, which stretches from Northern Nevada to the San Francisco Bay Area, Oregon, Washington and Southwest Alaska, recognizes Pop Warner participants in grades fifth through eighth who are in the 90th percentile and above in their class. 

The regional scholar athletes include Noah Cleary, Antonio Frankenberg, Caitlin Hamilton, Micheal Hartman and Haeden Suter on the first team, Matthew Cornell, Liam Nolan-Bowers, Aidan Pretti, Max Wilderman and Ghenna Zanfirov on the second team, and Clara Hart, Winston Pretti, Eleazar Santiago, Ricky Tinoco and Joe Wilderman receiving honorable mention.

In addition to their regional recognition, the following were named Pop Warner Scholastic All-Americans, which selects only the top 1 percent of academic performers from more than 400,000 Pop Warner participations nationwide: Cleary, Hartman and Suter on the second team, and Cornell, Frankenberg, Hamilton, Nolan-Bowers, Aidan Pretti, Max Wilderman and Zanfirov.

Pop Warner Little Scholars, Inc. is the nation’s largest youth football and cheerleading program and the only youth football and cheer program in the country that rewards academic excellence.