Bishop Ahr's Ariyana Agarwala is MyCentralJersey.com's Fall Sports Athlete of the Year

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Bishop Ahr gymnast Ariyana Agarwala, pictured with high school principal Sister Donna Marie Trukowski, has been voted MyCentralJersey.com’s Readers’ Choice Greater Middlesex Conference Fall Sports Athlete of the Year.

Bishop Ahr High School gymnast Ariyana Agarwala has been voted MyCentralJersey.com’s Readers’ Choice Greater Middlesex Conference Fall Sports Athlete of the Year.

The junior, who led the Trojans to a third consecutive conference tournament title and third straight North Jersey Section 2 championship, received 14,370 (or 56.9 percent) of the 25,217 total votes cast in an online poll featuring nine candidates.

Agarwala received a commemorative trophy, courtesy of MyCentralJersey.com, which Bishop Ahr principal Sister Donna Marie Trukowski recently presented to the exceptional student-athlete at the high school. 

The pool of Fall Sports Athlete of the Year nominees consisted of Home News Tribune Athletes of the Year in eight sports.

Bishop Ahr's Ariyana Agarwala competes on beam during the Greater Middlesex Conference Tournament at South Brunswick last year.

READ: Biographical sketches about our Fall Sports Athlete of the Year nominees

They included Jordyn Horowitz (East Brunswick volleyball), Nichole Adams (Old Bridge girls soccer), Dominique Nelson (Piscataway field hockey), Lauren Krinsky (East Brunswick girls soccer), Jake Beacher (Metuchen boys cross country), Shelby Piccinic (Colonia girls cross country), Matt Hoyt (Monroe boys soccer) and Elizabeth Yu (J.P. Stevens tennis).

The Home News Tribune’s reigning Gymnast of the Year, Agarwala was Bishop Ahr’s unquestioned leader and catalyst.

READ: Bishop Ahr's Agarwala is Home News Tribune Gymnast of the Year

Agarwala won the all-around at the sectional meet for the third time. She also captured her third straight all-around GMC title with gold medals on floor, uneven bars and vault.

A two-time Junior Olympian, Agarwala is the quintessential student-athlete. She takes honors classes, plays the piano and the violin, competes with her club gymnastics team and trains at Action Gymnastics in Millstone. Fencing would have made that list, but she’s put it on the backburner to focus on gymnastics. Agarwala even took an anatomy and physiology class at Brown University.

Bishop Ahr's Ariyana Agarwala performs on vault at the NJSIAA Gymnastics Championships on Nov. 10,  2016 at Montgomery.

Agarwala is already preparing to compete for a state title next fall and knows there’s a lot of hard work to put in between now and then. She views those grueling, marathon practice sessions philosophically. They’ve taught her a lot about life.

“You see with practice, it can relate to schoolwork, it can relate to anything that you’re doing,” she said. “The more hard work you put in, it will equal the result you will get back.”