It’s that time of the year again to hand out some Clarkies.

Can you believe this is the fourth annual Clarky Awards? I sure can’t. It just seems like the other day I was dreaming up the most coveted award on the island.

Winning a Clarky does a lot for the career and the ego. Just ask Trevor Dunbar. After winning three straight Clarkies he is running for the University of Portland after one of the best high school running careers Alaska has ever seen.

Without a Clarky, who knows where Dunbar would be now.

The Clarky is a career booster.

This year I’m scrapping some of the normal awards to hand out my decade awards. So without further hesitation here are the 2009 Clarky award winners.

Team of the year — Kodiak’s girls swimming team.

No other girls swimming team accomplished what the 2009 girls team did this year.

The girls finished a school-best second at state and won their third straight Region III title.

Female athlete of the year — Laura Griffing

Griffing, a junior, won her third straight 100-yard breaststroke state title in November.

She won the race in 1 minute, 6.57 seconds.

She didn’t swim the breaststroke for nearly a month after suffering tendonitis in her big toe on her right foot.

Male athlete of the year — Trevor Dunbar

This award should be renamed the Dunbar Award. This is Dunbar’s fourth straight Clarky Award for male athlete of the year. Pretty impressive.

Dunbar ended his 2009 prep career by winning a state title in the 1,600 and 3,200 meters.

He then became a national champion by winning the 2-mile title at the Nike Outdoor Nationals in Greensboro, N.C.

In the fall, Dunbar placed 76th at the NCAA Cross Country Championships for the University of Portland.

Team of the decade — Kodiak’s 2006 boys cross country team.

This category was a tough one for me. There have been so many great teams over the past 10 years in Kodiak, the 2001 boys basketball team, the 2004 baseball team and the 2007 boys track team just to name a few.

I ultimately chose the 2006 boys cross country team for many reasons.

This team was the first to win a state cross country title in the school’s history and it was the beginning of three straight state titles for Kodiak.

What impresses me the most about this team is it was comprised of five future college runners — yes, five.

Here are the five in order of their finish at the state meet.

Trevor Dunbar is running at the University of Portland; Cory Pena spent two years at the University of Alaska Anchorage; Lucas Fried is running at the South Dakota College of Mines; Sam Salus just finished his first year at the University of Idaho; Miles Dunbar is running at Chico State University.

I don’t know cross country all that well, but I’m guessing having five of the seven varsity runners advance to the next level doesn’t happen much.

Female athlete of the decade — Chloe Ivanoff and Tianna Allen

This was another tough category for me, so I gave the honor to a pair of deserving athletes in Ivanoff and Allen.

Allen pretty much willed the 2008 Kodiak softball team to a state title and is now looking to pitch for Iowa State University – a Division I school.

Allen struck out 62 in 31 innings, gave up nine hits and allowed only one run in six games at the 2008 state tournament.

During the regular season she went 11-5, which included four no-hitters, six complete games and 165 strikeouts and only 18 walks. She recorded 17 strikeouts in one game, which was only two shy of a school record.

Ivanoff is a multi-talented athlete who starred as a wrestler and a runner.

Ivanoff is ranked 10th in the nation for female wrestlers at 120 pounds by the United State Girls Wrestling Association. She has won two straight Alaska United State Girls Wrestling State Championships and advanced to the high school state wrestling tournament twice.

In running, she has the second fastest time for a Kodiak girl at Fort Abercrombie at 19:36.

Her junior season she churned out a career-best fifth-place finish at the state meet.

Male athlete of the decade — Trevor Dunbar

Dunbar re-wrote the history book when it comes to high school running in Alaska. He is a three-time cross country state champion, and won three track titles — two 1,600 and one in the 3,200.

He is best known around the nation as the kid who ran a 9:01 two-mile time trial in the snow at Joe Floyd Track and Field. The video went viral and put Dunbar and Kodiak on the map.