NEW YORK – Los Angeles Dodgers two-time National League All-Star Outfielder Cody Bellinger received the 2019 AHEPA Harry Agganis Hellenic Athlete Award at a presentation made prior to the Dodgers game with the New York Mets, at Citi Field, September 15, 2019, announced AHEPA President George G. Horiates. President Horiates, Chairman of the Board Nicholas Karacostas, and Awards Selection Committee Chairman Gregory Stamos presented the award to Bellinger, who is considered a candidate for this year’s National League Most Valuable Player.

“We are honored to present Cody Bellinger with the prestigious Harry Agganis Award,” Horiates said. “Throughout his life, Bellinger has demonstrated excellence as a baseball player. He has flourished as a Major Leaguer and has earned coveted accolades that have eluded many players who reach the Majors. As a community, we are proud of his many accomplishments, and we wish Cody continued success.”

“I would like to thank AHEPA for this recognition,” Bellinger said. “The Award has special meaning to the Greek American community, and I am honored to receive it.”

During the 2019 season, Bellinger, 24 years old, is slashing an impressive .306/.410/.639 with 44 home runs, 106 RBI, and an OPS of 1.049, earning his second All-Star appearance. In his first Major League season, Bellinger was selected as an All-Star and unanimously was named the 2017 National League Rookie of the Year, becoming the Dodgers’ 18th Rookie of the Year and the 22nd player overall to win the award by unanimous vote. In 2018, Bellinger displayed postseason brilliance, appearing in all 12 of the Dodgers’ postseason games and was awarded the 2018 NLCS MVP after driving in the game-winning runs in Games 4 and 7.

Cody is the son of Clay Bellinger, a two-time World Series champion for the New York Yankees who also played for Greece’s 2004 Olympic baseball team.

The AHEPA Harry Agganis award is named after the legendary multi-sport athlete of Greek heritage who died prematurely at 26 from a pulmonary embolism. Agganis, known as “The Golden Greek,” played professional baseball for the Boston Red Sox and was a college football All-American at Boston University.

Previous recipients of the Agganis Award include: NBA MVP and All-Star Giannis Antetokounmpo, Professional Baseball All-Star and World Series Champion Mike Moustakas, Professional Baseball All-Star Player Nick Markakis, former Professional Football Placekicker and Super Bowl Champion Matt Stover, Olympic Diving Champion Greg Louganis, Ultra-Marathoner Dean Karnazes, World Champion Decathlete Tom Pappas, and Professional Football Player Fred Smerlas.

The AHEPA National Athletic Department offers a wide range of regional and national sporting events and competitions. In 1975 the AHEPA Hellenic Hall of Fame was established, and since its inception, more than 150 individuals have been inducted. Also included in the program are National Athletic and Scholarships Awards for amateur and professional athletes who are spotlighted and honored annual at the AHEPA Supreme Convention.

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Founded in 1922 in Atlanta, Georgia, on the principles that undergirded its fight for civil rights and against discrimination, bigotry, and hatred endured at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, AHEPA is the largest and oldest grassroots association of American citizens of Greek heritage and Philhellenes with more than 400 chapters across the United States, Canada, and Europe.

AHEPA’s mission is to promote the ancient Greek ideals of Education, Philanthropy, Civic Responsibility, and Family and Individual Excellence through community service and volunteerism.

For more information, please visit www.ahepa.org.

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Chicago native Kyra Vidas joins the Atlanta Dream as Director of Basketball Operations after graduating from Lake Forest College in May 2018 with a degree in Business and Communication with a minor in Classical Studies. Vidas is one of the youngest Directors of Operations in the WNBA.

While studying at Lake Forest, Vidas worked with the Chicago Sky for four seasons in a variety of roles. After working as an intern during the 2015 season, Vidas was an equipment manager in 2016 and served as a Director of Operations assistant in 2017 and 2018. Vidas also worked in the athletic department at Lake Forest for four years.

Outside of her work during college, Vidas played on Lake Forest’s varsity handball team and won national titles in her freshman and sophomore years. She also earned All-American honors as a member of the handball team and she continues to play handball at the local and national level. Additionally, Vidas spent four years playing on the women’s club rugby team and led many student organizations on campus while staying active in the community.

Although she didn’t play basketball in college, basketball runs in Vidas’ family. Vidas still holds records at Taft High School, where she played on the varsity basketball team for four years. Her father, Kirk, played for Panathinaikos of the EuroLeague and was a member of the Greek national team for many years.

In her free time, Vidas volunteers as the national governor of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, a philanthropic organization founded in Atlanta.

Vidas’ parents, Kirk and Emily, and brothers, Nicholas and George, still live in Chicago. She is the youngest of the three children.

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Thirty nine years and three arenas ago, Pete Anton donned a red jacket and went to work for the Silver and Black. From the media entrance at the old HemisFair Arena, Anton checked the credentials of broadcasters, reporters and photographers arriving to cover the first game of a fledgling ABA franchise.

The boxscore contains many historic tidbits, from the final score (San Diego Conquistadors 121, San Antonio Spurs 106) and attendance (5,879) to the leading scorers for the home team (Rich Jones with 25) and visitors (Slew Johnson, 38). What it doesn’t record is this: On Oct. 10, 1973, Anton began a run at the Spurs media gate that would cover more than 1,700 home games (preseason, regular season and postseason) across parts of five decades.

He’s outlasted 14 head coaches and generations of players and media. “I’m one of the originals,” says Anton, a warm, ever-smiling gentleman whose affable nature belies his 87 years.

He’s also an institution, an enduring fixture at home games who owns more championship bling — three rings, one watch — than every player in franchise history except Tim Duncan. Speaking of No. 21: Anton started working the media entrance three years before Duncan was born.

“I enjoy what I do,” Anton says. “I’ll keep doing it as long as my health is great and my mind is clear.”

His memory is vivid, his eye for deception sharp. Anton can tell you about the guy who tried to gain entry to the HemisFair Arena, claiming to be George Gervin’s cousin. He can tell you about the dude who offered a $50 bribe to get into a sold-out game. He can tell you about the fans who tried to seduce him.

“Young girls would come and proposition me to let them in and I’d have to go chase them away,” Anton says. “That was back in the old days.”

The old days are chronicled with photos and stories in scrapbooks. Anton also collects Spurs memorabilia. Pennants. Hats. Mugs. T-shirts. He’s remains as devoted a fan as any season ticket-holder.

“We had to work our holidays around the Spurs schedule because that was his priority,” says Irene Pavlovsky, Anton’s 55-year-old daughter. “It was funny. We’d say, ‘Dad we are going to do Christmas,’ and he’d say, ‘Let me check my schedule.’ We had to make sure the Spurs weren’t playing on a day we wanted to do something special. But it was fun.”

Baseball, you could say, brought Anton into the world of basketball. A next door neighbor who played in the 1936 Major League All-Star game, Pinkey Whitney, was asked to work the Spurs media gate. The neighbor invited Anton to join him. “Pinkey told me stories from the Babe Ruth era,” Anton says.

A native of East Chicago, Ind., Gregg Popovich’s hometown, the Franchise Original was born to Greek immigrants who shortened their last name from Antonouplos upon arriving at Ellis Island. The kid grew up playing pickup basketball but says he was too short to play in high school. He married and moved in the early 1960s to San Antonio — where his wife grew up — and became a sales representative for a merchandising company.

Ten years later, he began checking credentials. Along the way, Anton made friends with hundreds of Spurs, with visiting coaches and players, with everyone from the owner to the ballboy. “I’ve seen ‘em come and go,” he says. “They come back and say, ‘Hi Pete!’ I say, ‘Who are you?’ And it’s a ballboy from way back.”

Players from another generation seek him out when visiting the AT&T Center. Gervin. James Silas. Mark Olberding. Others. “They all come up and talk to me,” Anton says.

Current players enjoy his company, too. Manu Ginobili once autographed a jersey for Anton’s son, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

The Spurs are his second family, the AT&T Center his second home. For a 7:30 p.m. tipoff, he arrives at 3 p.m., long before the first reporter shows up, and works his station until the end of the third quarter. He finishes the game in the media room.

The red jacket he used to wear is gone.Today, he wears a black suit. His wife, Angie, passed away a few years ago. “He feels the Spurs have kept him going,” Pavlovsky says. “They give him something to look forward to.”

Anton’s only daughter lives in Katy. She is often asked why she wears a Spurs jersey instead of Houston Rockets gear. She explains her father’s relationship with the team. Heads nod. Questions go away.

When her dad turned 80, he received lots of gifts. But the one he talked about most was the ball autographed by each Spur. Seven years later, the gift remains a treasure, a word his second family uses to describe him.

The NHIBT is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization supports enthusiastically the Hellenic community and Hellenic youth throughout the Chicagoland area. We follow and support the same values and ideas that drive the Hellenic Foundation.

The NHIBT was founded in 1931and is one of the oldest national basketball tournaments of any kind, preceding the NAIA (1937), NIT (1938), and NCAA (1939). The NHIBT typically hosts 30 to 40 local and national youth basketball teams, ranging in ages of eight years old to adult, in the Chicagoland area. Visit www.nhibt.com to learn more. The NHIBT was also the “divine spark” for several Midwest Pan-Orthodox tournaments.

The goal of the NHIBT is to provide, for all ages and genders, a forum for Greek Orthodox Americans to convene, cultivate, and nurture personal and professional relationships with other Greek Orthodox Americans both locally and across the nation, and at times international. We focus on the event to Promote, Support, and Preserve Hellenism through competition and fellowship. With our vision, along with our over-arching goals, we strategize to make the NHIBT the tournament of choice for the Hellenic community to compete in and support.

The NHIBT maintains over 88 years of Hellenic tradition, and a culture which holds tremendous nostalgia and love for thousands of participants since its inception.

With the Hellenic Grant the NHIBT will be better equipped to promote sportsmanship, ethics, Hellenic spirit, volunteerism, team play, and fundamentals of competition in line with our ancestors’ ideals.

The grant funding, from the Hellenic Foundation – Chicago, will provide the NHIBT the opportunity to provide, but not limited to, the following:

• increasing participation and opportunity for the Hellenic youth and community
• increasing financial independence to support Hellenic individuals, events, and organizations.
• give back and assist Hellenic community with expanding participation and awareness of the NHIBT to the Hellenic youth.
• the ability to provide the Hellenic youth with greater opportunities to connect and obtain life-long friendships.

On behalf of all those that volunteered, coached, participated, and supported the NHIBT, we are truly grateful to receive this generous grant from the Hellenic Foundation. Thank you!

Dean Manasses, AIA
NHIBT President
On behalf of the N.H.I.B.T. Committee