Hamden Hall Country Day School
Educating Students in PreSchool through Grade 12

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Alum Deb Gruen Receives Yale's Walton Award

 

Yale's senior swimmer, and HH alum, Deb Gruen, received the Athletics Department’s Amanda Walton Award for 2010 at Class Day exercises Sunday afternoon as part of Commencement Weekend. The award is presented to an outstanding student-athlete who has excelled in competition and who has shown spirit and courage in transcending unforeseen challenges. Gruen, who was born with spina bifida, has inspired those around her with remarkable achievements both athletically and academically. Those achievements include four world and Pan-American records, six American records and two Paralympic Games appearances in addition to her four years swimming for the Bulldogs. She was also a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship and will graduate with a B.A. in economics on Monday. Her senior thesis is on the application of econometrics to Paralympic swimming classifications.

 

Gruen, whose condition leaves her unable to use her legs when she swims and requires that she walk with a pair of canes, was named the New Haven Register Sports Person of the Year this past January for her accomplishments in 2009. That included a world-record performance in the 400-meter individual medley at the Spring Can-Am Championship in March and a silver medal in the 100-meter breaststroke at the Paralympic World Championships in May. In the spring of 2009 she received Yale’s Francis Gordon Brown Award, given to a junior “of good scholarship and character”. The award is named after Francis Gordon Brown, a College Football Hall of Famer who captained Yale to a national championship in 1900 but passed away at the age of 31 from diabetes.

 

Shortly after being honored as Sports Person of the Year by the Register this past January, Gruen ended her Yale athletic career on a high note by swimming in three different events at the prestigious Yale-Harvard-Princeton meet. She earned her fourth varsity letter this past season and received the Yale swimming and diving team’s MacLeish Memorial Swimming Trophy. The trophy is awarded to the swimmer who “through her efforts and high ideals in sportsmanship and loyalty, best exemplifies the spirit of Kenneth MacLeish.” Gruen’s other recent honors include selection for the U.S. Paralympics team at the upcoming Swimming Worlds in Eindhoven, Netherlands, and the Bob Casey Courage Award from the Connecticut Sports Writers’ Alliance.

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Hamden Hall Country Day School, located less than two miles from Yale University, is one of the best private schools in Connecticut to enroll elementary, middle, and high school students. Our nurturing and inclusive community provides a dynamic learning environment that promotes academic excellence by understanding each child and fostering their individual growth.