Since 1943, Washington High School has given the Bob Neumann Sportsmanship Award to a senior athlete at the end of the year, but who was Bob Neumann?

During the 1941-42 WCHS school year, the final year in the old building on Spruce Street before the school moved to Bondurant Street, the basketball team finished with a 21-7 record with mostly an underclassmen roster.  They won the Tazewell County Championship and became the second team in school history to win twenty games.  The leading scorer on that team was Junior Bob Neumann.

The 1941-42 football team went 8-1, allowing only 45 points in those nine games. Neumann, the best athlete in the school, was one of the star players.

Neumann was a standout in baseball and track and participated in the music, speech, and drama programs at Washington High School. He was the "Big Man on Campus" by the end of the 1941-42 school year. Bob's senior year was on the horizon: a new school on Bondurant Street with high expectations for the talented student-athlete and numerous opportunities the new school would present.

Around this same time (1941), Eureka Lake was built to provide the city with drinking water. The lake also became a free and frequent swimming option for Washington youth.

For all of the activities Bob Neumann excelled in, swimming wasn't an official school sport then. He learned what he could on his own.  On a hot summer day just after his junior year ended, he and a few  Washington boys, including Herman Linder, Jack Shipley, Donald Lucas, and Gerald Lucas, went to Eureka Lake to cool off and have fun.   Neumann and Russell Kinzinger decided to swim across a narrow part of the lake. About halfway across, Bob was tired and called out for help.

Kinzinger reached out to grab his buddy, but his much smaller size put him in danger of being pulled under.  Shipley, Robert Shawhan, and Eureka's William Lamb all dove in to save Bob to no avail. Neumann's body was pulled from the lake approximately 90 minutes later from an area twenty feet deep.  Resuscitation efforts were attempted but futile.

Neumann's services were held the next Monday at the Evangelical Church, and the entire junior class attended the services for their friend. Neumann's drowning led to the construction of a small beach and restricted swimming area at Eureka Lake.

The next spring, alumni Don Ingle and Loren Miller conceived of and raised funds for the Bob Neumann Sportsmanship Award, which would be awarded at graduation. The first recipient was Neumann's good friend, Harry Kimpling.