The North Shore Sport Awards were held earlier this month at West Vancouver Community Centre, providing an excellent opportunity to celebrate some achievements old and new in the sporting world.
And there was much to celebrate. Notable names on the list at the sport awards included the youth female and male athletes of the year, who happen to be possibly the best teenage hockey players in the world. There’s no doubt that Chloe Primerano, who is looking like a young Bobby Orr out there on the world stage, is the best young female hockey player on Earth. And the only person possibly preventing North Shore Sport Award-winner Macklin Celebrini from that same title on the men’s side could be last year’s North Shore youth male athlete of the year, Connor Bedard.
Closer to home, some North Shore teams that scored big over the past year were recognized at the awards, and it was a joy to see all those young athletes up on stage. The Windsor Secondary senior boys were recognized for winning both the provincial football and soccer titles, a feat they accomplished last fall in the span of about a week. To make it even more remarkable, the same cohort won the provincial basketball title this year too, just a few days before the sport awards were held. I’ve been following the North Shore sports scene for many years, and I can’t recall a hat trick of high-level high school titles from one class of boys or girls quite like this one. The Wolves of Windsor are dangerous these days.
It was likewise delightful to see the Mount Seymour Little League juniors up on stage, recognized for their inspiring run all the way to the Junior League World Series last summer. It’s a great story. Junior is an age group in which many Little League programs are petering out, with their players moving on to play on different circuits. But a group of Seymour kids decided to stick together and take a shot at doing something great. How’d that go? Nearly pitch perfect – a national title, and wins at the World Series over Mexico and Australia.
Another highlight of the night was seeing the Argyle Pipers senior boys soccer team earn an award after they claimed the AAA provincial title for the first time since 1988. The biggest cheer of the night, however, came for one of Argyle’s assistant coaches. The Argyle lads went wild when Gerry Macey, looking spry well into his 70s, had his name called to collect the community sport volunteer award. His decades of coaching shone through as he commandeered one of the microphones to give the crowd a quick pep talk. Radiating positive energy, you could easily tell why the players he coaches love him.
Another person who deserves major recognition was someone in the crowd at North Shore Sport Awards, not an actual winner. At least, not on that night. Leslie Buchanan, a longtime member of the sport awards selection committee, was recognized just a week prior with one of the highest sporting honours in the province, the Sport BC Daryl Thompson Lifetime Achievement Award. Buchanan was honoured for her decades of work in the sport of triathlon, helping to build it almost from scratch to the thriving worldwide powerhouse it is today.
In a neat writeup from Sport BC, Buchanan described getting pressed into duty at a water station for a triathlon some 40+ years ago while she was just standing on a street corner hoping to cheer on a high school friend. A week later she was called into duty again, helping participants in another race stay on the right course. A week later she was timing another race.
“Over that summer I must have done every job associated with putting on a triathlon,” she said. Forty years later she’s still running the show, now as an Olympic technical delegate and executive board member with World Triathlon.
Another North Shore triathlon trailblazer was also honoured by Sport BC, with Peter Denny of North Vancouver earning the President’s Award for his dedication to the North Shore Triathlon and B.C.’s sports community.
Other winners at the North Shore Sport Awards included wakeboarder Hunter Smith and rugby player Savannah Bauder as the senior male and female athletes of the year, Andrea Damiani as the master athlete, Dorina Stan as coach of the year, August Portal for the Jim Martin Youth Leadership Award, and Tara Llanes and Nathan Clement as the para female and male athletes of the year.
It was great to see generations of North Shore strength all on display on the same stage.
Andy Prest is the editor of the North Shore News. His humour/lifestyle column runs biweekly.
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