Olympic High School sports medicine instructor and head athletic trainer Scott Peck is the state’s Sports Medicine Instructor of the Year.

Peck, 47, who has taught sports medicine at Olympic for 18 years and instructed at the high school level for 24, earned the award at the state’s annual Sports Medicine Competition/Symposium April 17 and 18.

Peck, who won the same award in 1997, teaches three sports medicine classes at Olympic, all of which are year-round. He has about 75 students.

“It’s a great honor to be nominated and win it,” Peck said Wednesday. “It’s for the kids; they always make me proud.”

Part of the competition required each instructor’s students to write a one-page essay explaining why their instructor deserves to be the Instructor of the Year.

Peck said his students’ words were both flattering and humbling.

“Reading what my kids wrote about me just kind of brought a tear to my eye,” he said. “That’s the main reason we are here — for the kids.”

Peck was a certified athletic trainer at Newport High School in Bellevue for four years after previously teaching in Arizona.

Olympic sports medicine student Rebecca Campbell earned a scholarship from the Washington Vocational Sports Medicine Association, according to OHS athletic director Nate Andrews, and the school finished sixth overall in the school competition, comprised of 45 schools from around the state as well as three from California.

Peck said the annual competition is the only one of its kind in the nation.

For more information about the competition, visit www.wvsma.org.