17th July 2015
The Sports Union held its inaugural Sports Awards at the end of term, hosting a black tie event to celebrate the many sporting achievements of St Brendan’s students throughout the year.
Employability Challenge Platinum Winners
First up to receive their awards were the Employability Challenge winners. This was a chance to recognise members of the Sports Union who have taken strides in developing themselves and their CV. Any student within College can take part in the challenge, which requires pupils to engage with sports-related management tasks. From sports coaching and officiating, sports development and event organisation, to creating media and journalism pieces for events, many students embraced the challenge and completed some fantastic work. This year saw the introduction of these awards as a pilot programme to St Brendan’s, with a small number of students enrolling, after such success, the sports department look forward to encouraging all Sports Union students to take part in the challenge from September! 22 students won awards based on the number of hours they dedicated to the programme. Special congratulations to Maddison Wheeler, Albin Varghese, Cormac O’Callghan, Jacob Lewis, Hannah Palmer, Alex Skuse,Becky Smith and Callum Fry, who won Platinum Awards for an amazing 150+ hours of employability activity!
Moving on from the Employability Challenge, the ‘Coach’s Player’ and ‘Player’s Player’ for each team sport were announced to a great round of applause from the crowd. Congratulations to the following winners:
Hannah Palmer and Maddison Wheeler (Netball), Cormac O’Callaghan and Yakin Choudury (Basketball), Ben Starr and Michael Apperley (Rugby), Will Brant and David Regula (Football 1sts), Callum Rogers (Football 2nds), Tom Ryan (Football 3rds) and Ellie Lester (Football Ladies 1sts).
After a short interlude of some more humorous awards, which included the ‘Mr Bump Award’, ‘Selfie King’ Award and the ‘(not so) Great British Bake-Off Award’, the awards of real prestige resumed.
First up was the Charlie Davidson Award which is presented to one person each year who has demonstrated high levels of sporting endeavour. With numerous fantastic achievements this year, including rugby, netball and basketball success, national level superstars, Bristol Rovers trials and Bristol Flyers places secured, choosing a single winner was a hard task! Congratulations to winner Lucy Pearce, who was recognised by the whole department for her accomplishments in the pool. Bringing home 2 gold’s and 1 bronze from the South West Schools Finals and getting to the National Finals in the process, rightly qualified her for the Charlie Davidson trophy!
Next came the ‘Pass on your Passion’ Award, given to students who goes a little further, in an effort to provide others with an opportunity to participate and perform in sport and exercise. This year’s winner provided sporting opportunities to a diverse range of college members - Albin Varghese.
Our final prestigious award was for ‘Team of the Season’. The title of the award is self-explanatory but selecting a winner was not so easy for the sport department. The decision was made based on the team’s commitment to training; their continuously high levels of performance week in, week out; their academic efforts and their quite remarkable turnaround from last season. With all of this considered the deserving winners were the Netball 1st team.
Following the awards, the celebrations continued, with Sports Union members celebrating the past season, and looking ahead to a big year. Head of Sport, Vicki Haigh said: “It was such a great pleasure to see all of our sports teams come together in celebration of each other’s achievements. This has been a brilliant year for the Sports Union and we are set for even bigger things next year. I can only look forward to next year with great enthusiasm and hope to see many more award winners earning their place in St Brendan’s history.”
