Page 26 - All Arkansas Preps 2020

26M Sunday, June 28, 2020 | All-Arkansas Preps | Advertising Supplement to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
HUSSMAN COMMUNITY AWARD
SUBMITTED PHOTOS
CATHERINE ALTHOFF SENIOR / MOUNT ST. MARY ACADEMY
>> WHY SHE WON
Putting the needs of others ahead of herself is something Catherine Althoff learned from an early age.
Catherine was born four weeks premature, along with her twin sister,
Caroline. e twins spent several weeks in a neonatal intensive-care unit at Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock. Not long after their stay in the NICU, they contracted respiratory syncytial virus, a common lung infection, which put Catherine on a ventilator for a week.
e care that Catherine and her sister received at the hospital stayed with Catherine as she grew up. Now a senior at Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock, a spirit of selflessness drives her on the court and in her personal life.
During her high school career, Catherine has logged hundreds of volunteer hours and led the Mount St. Mary Academy girls basketball team to the first round of the 2020 Class 7A State Tournament. She also graduated as salutatorian of her class. is dedication to volunteerism, as well as athletics, has earned Catherine this year’s All-Arkansas Preps Hussman Community Award.
“It feels amazing. It was just a complete surprise,” Catherine said. “I didn’t even know that it was something I was being nominated for.”
Catherine was dedicated to soccer during her younger years but decided to focus her athletic energy into basketball in high school. at is when Marilyn Lenggenhager, athletic director at St. Mary, got to know the now 18-year-old senior. It didn’t take long for Lenggenhager to find out that there was much more to Catherine than athletics.
“As I got to know her, I started understanding her passion also for volunteering and giving back to the community,” Lenggenhager said of Catherine. “She has so many passions. She did volunteer work everywhere.”
By “everywhere,” Lenggenhager means Catherine has dedicated hours to volunteer activities, ranging from CARTI, Baptist Health and the American Heart Association to sport-specific training and development programs. Although St. Mary requires a minimum of about 30 volunteer hours for a senior to graduate, Catherine easily surpassed the requirement.
One volunteer activity that was special to Catherine was her involvement with the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Star Achievers program when she was a freshman. Her mother, Christine Althoff, said Catherine and Caroline have a special connection to Children’s because of their family’s experiences when the girls were born.
“ ey contracted RSV infections as infants, and they were four weeks early anyway,” Christine said. “ eir lungs were still little. ey spent a couple of weeks in the NICU; then they got RSV and ended up having to be hospitalized again.”