Cape Girardeau Central High School has an award-winning problem: too many trophies.

Athletic Director Terry Kitchen said three display cases in the school are crammed full of trophies representing years of achievement by Central students.

The dilemma presented to Kitchen is what to do with all those trophies.

"This is the kind of problem an athletic director loves to have," Kitchen said. "With as many activities as we have at Central High School, it's easy to see how these trophies add up."

Central High fields teams in 19 sports, including boys' and girls' teams. The high school cases included trophies from championship teams dating back decades. It's not so easy to weed out the honors.

"A lot of young men and women battled for those trophies," Kitchen said. "Kids come by and point out that's the team I played on. When we have ball games, alumni come in and say I played on that team."

He's sure if trophies are removed, they will be missed, but space is short.

"I like to have as many trophies as we can," Kitchen said. "But when you get too many crammed in, that loses some of the impact. I think eventually we will have to look the situation over and see if we should make a change."

Over the summer, Kitchen sorted through the awards and filtered a few into a storage room. "We did take a few trophies from third, fourth, fifth and sixth place out."

But it didn't make much of a dent in the collection.

And already this year, the trophies are rolling in. "I've got 10 in the secretary's office trying to figure out how to get them in," Kitchen said.

Trophies representing state championships and conference titles must remain. Trophies won by teams that don't win often also will stay.

"I've got the 1954 state championship trophy and the 1980 state championship trophy in the case outside my office," he said.

The three cases include trophies won by all types of school teams, not just athletics, Kitchen said. "We want to make sure there is room for all the groups. We did have one the pon pom squad won, but it was too big to fit in the case."

A committee of students, staff and community members has been working on a Central High School Hall of Fame.

Kitchen hopes that group will have some ideas on how best to display Central's winning tradition.

He welcomes the problem though. "This really is the kind of problem an athletic director loves to have."