In the Summer Issue of The Bootleg
Magazine, we released the 30 finalists for The Bootleg Honor
Roll award for the 2004/2005 school-year.
The criteria are as follows:
Each academic year, The Bootleg’s
Honor Roll will recognize the top ten Stanford student-athletes
who have performed at an exceptional level, with athletic
accomplishments that are both extraordinary and inspirational. While achieving athletic success, these athletes should also have
displayed uncommon leadership, sportsmanship and respect towards
their fellow teammates and opponents. Finally, these
honorees’ performances and actions should also demonstrate
their love for their particular sport as well as their school
pride, the famed “Spirit of Stanford.”
During the month of August, we will be releasing the 10 winners of this
prestigious award, one by one. Our first announced member of the The
Bootleg's 2004-05 Honor Roll is men's water polo performer Tony Azevedo.
Steve Spurrier, O.J. Simpson, Archie Griffin, Marcus Allen, Vinny Testaverde. In college football, just skimming the list of Heisman
Trophy winners conjures enough images of greatness to form goose bumps on your skin. (Just ask a
Stanford diehard about 1970 winner Jim Plunkett.) Consider then, that when Tony Azevedo received the Peter J. Cutino Award
recently in June, the Stanford standout
was no stranger to the award widely considered the Heisman Trophy of water polo. In fact, the 2004 campaign marked the graduating
Stanford senior’s fourth consecutive Cutino – an accomplishment nearly impossible to fathom.
For Azevedo however, the four straight Cutinos were just one of many
remarkable feats achieved during his Cardinal career. The Long Beach, Calif.
native was the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) Player of the Year four
years running and he led Stanford in scoring in each of his four years on The
Farm. He concludes his college career as a four-time First Team
All-American.
Azevedo will not merely be remembered for his accolades, however. The man
played the largest when the games mattered the most. His 15 scores at the 2004
Olympics topped all but one water polo player at Athens. At Stanford, Azevedo
notched a school-record 332 goals over his career, but just as importantly, he
tallied 11 scores in the four national title games in which he played. Though
Stanford fell in overtime in the last two national title contests, the recent
runner-up finishes couple with championships in 2001 and 2002 to leave an
unmistakable imprint upon Azevedo’s legacy: champion.
This past winter, Azevedo signed with a professional club in Italy to the
tune of nearly $300,000 annually – the largest deal ever for an American water
polo player. With Azevedo under contract in Italy and the Beijing Games on the
horizon, it appears his Stanford degree in International Relations will serve
him well in years to come.
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