Ricoh Sport Awards

Last night, Saturday June 5th, saw the Ricoh Sport Awards dinner in Halifax. The Ricohs (formerly Ikon Sport Awards) recognise the best of amateur sport in Nova Scotia.

Each Provincial Sporting Organisation (such as TNS) nominates their candidates for each category; male athlete, female athlete, coach, official, volunteer and so on. Each nominee gets a trophy. Here are the people that TNS put forward;

(l-r) Macgregor Grant (representing the Canada Games Mens Team of Mac Grant,Brad Piggott and Parker Vaughan), Luke MacDonald (Corporate Sponsor), Andrew Dacanay (Official), Emily Wood (Female Athlete), Brad Piggott (Male Athlete), Matt Piggott, Jason Lawton (Coach) and kneeling (perhaps not surprisingly after the Cabot Trail) Mark Campbell (Volunteer). They each got one of these...

For every category bar Voluntold, two committees look at each nominee and category to come up with a shortlist of three for x Of The Year. Although someone has to win this, just making the shortlist is almost as good as winning. as it recognises that for the year, you were the best athlete, official or whatever in all of sport in Nova Scotia.

For such a small organisation, TNS has enjoyed considerable success at the Ricoh/Ikons recently, with Jason and Jennifer Lawton being shortlisted for Coach of the Year in 2007, Jason Murphy making the Official of the Year shortlist in 2009 and we're pretty sure Ken Grandy made the list a few years ago but for the life of use we can't remember what the category was. Furthermore, Shawn Amirault won the Fair Play award last year for an act that still brings a tear to the TurnAround's eye.

As an aside, Mike todd, a TNS board-member was nominated and won Coach Of The Year for Sailing!

We nominated Aerobics First as Corporate Sponsor and they not only made the shortlist, they won the Corporate Sponsor Of The Year award, beating Bell-Aliant and Nautel (a local company who manufacture radio equipment). The committee recognised A1's grass-roots support for local amateur sport, and as TNS wrote in their nomination package "we cannot put a dollar figure on their support, but their philanthropy is more valuable than any cash donation".

Well done and congratulations to all of the nominees, and a huge congratulations (and a huge thank-you for all your support) to Luke and the gang at A1.

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