On Saturday, Kankakee Valley Broadcasting announced its Athlete of the Year winners.
The new Tony (The Boss) Ross MAX 98.3 FM Athlete of the Year recipient is Eliana Grubbs!
The Tyler Roth WKVI Athlete of the Year recipient is Myles McLaughlin!
Eliana Grubbs is the first person to ever receive the Tony (The Boss) Ross MAX 98.3 FM Athlete of the Year award, which is given in memory of Tony Ross; a beloved broadcaster for MAX 98.3 who passed away unexpectedly in the fall of 2024. Ross was the voice of local athletics in the area for decades, and will be remembered for his strong passion for broadcasting and commitment to area sports programs; both on-air and on the sidelines.
The Tyler Roth WKVI Athlete of the Year is awarded in memory of Tyler Roth, a 2001 graduate of Winamac High School who died in a car accident in 2001, a week after his high school graduation. This was the 25th year the Tyler Roth WKVI Athlete of the Year was awarded, which memorializes Roth’s multiple athletic and academic accomplishments over his high school career.
Tony (The Boss) Ross MAX 98.3 FM Athlete of the Year recipient Eliana Grubbs has received multiple awards and recognitions for her athletic achievements in volleyball, basketball, and softball. Grubbs is a Bremen Athletics Wall of Fame Inductee, a 3-Sport Senior Athlete Award winner, and has 12 Varsity Letters. She holds school records in all three of her sports, as well as many other honors including scoring 1,230 points over her basketball career.
Myles McLaughlin, the winner of this year’s Tyler Roth WKVI Athlete of the Year, made national news this school year for his accomplishments in Football. In 2025, McLaughlin won Indiana Mr. Football, the Gatorade Player of the Year, MaxPreps Player of the Year, and made the cover of the Indiana Football Digest among many other highlights this past football season. Additionally, McLaughlin holds 30 records including at the national and state level.
Kankakee Valley Broadcasting’s Sports Director, Mitch Columbe, shared what goes into choosing the Athlete of the Year recipients.
“So we have an Athlete of the Week throughout the school year when we start in August, that begins, I want to say the third week in August, or the first week of football, and that is our first Saturday show on both stations: on MAX it’s the Saturday morning Coaches show and on WKVI it’s the Saturday Sports Line. And each week throughout the school year on Saturday morning, we have the interview with our Athlete of the Week that was announced the week prior and then at the end of the show each week, we announce the new Athlete of the Week and each Athlete of the Week is only named once, so they can be a multi-sport athlete that does amazing in the spring, in the fall, in the winter, but if they’ve already been named once, they do not get named again, that way we have more to choose from for the Athlete of the Year. So at the end of the year, we look at all of our Athletes of the Week, and we decide from that list who was the best and also most representing of this award. For WKVI it’s the Tyler Roth WKVI Athlete of the Year, and then for MAX, now we started brand new this year, it’s the Tony (The Boss) Ross MAX 98.3FM Athlete of the Year.”
The pool of Athlete of the Week recipients is from 15 different area schools that Kankakee Valley Broadcasting covers for sports. MAX 98.3FM covers the schools of Argos, Bremen, Culver Academies, Culver Community, John Glenn, LaVille, Plymouth, and Triton. WKVI covers West Central, Winamac, Culver Community, Knox, North Judson-San Pierre, Oregon-Davis, South Central, and Tri-Township.
Kankakee Valley Broadcasting wishes to congratulate all the athletes named this year as Athlete of the Week on both stations, and congratulations to Eliana Grubbs and Myles McLaughlin for winning Athlete of the Year.
