From Tokyo to Beijing, it was a whirlwind of achievement and emotion. Some of the biggest names in sa国际传媒 sports over the past two years were announced as winners at the 55th Sport sa国际传媒 awards ceremony held Thursday at the Vancouver Convention Centre.
Beijing Winter Games champion Micah Zandee-Hart of Saanichton, the first player from sa国际传媒 to win Olympic gold in women’s hockey, was selected as the province’s top female athlete. Tokyo Summer Olympics gold-medallist women’s soccer mentor Bev Priestman was named top coach and hockey prodigy Connor Bedard of North Vancouver the best junior athlete.
The awards spanned achievement for a combined 2021 and 2022 due to previous ceremony cancellations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Sport sa国际传媒 administers amateur sport in the province.
Zandee-Hart beat out fellow female top-athlete finalists Avalon Wasteneys, the former UVic Vikes rowing standout from Campbell River, who keyed the Island-based Olympic gold-medallist Canadian women’s eight in the delayed Tokyo Summer Games in 2021, and Julia Grosso of Burnaby, who scored the dramatic winning penalty in the shootout as sa国际传媒 won women’s Olympic soccer gold in Tokyo.
Race-walker Evan Dunfee of Richmond, bronze medallist in the Tokyo Olympics and gold medallist in the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games, was named best sa国际传媒 male athlete of the past two years.
University of Victoria Vikes field-hockey star and U Sports MVP Anna Mollenhauer, also a member of the senior national team in the 2022 World Cup and Birmingham Commonwealth Games, was named top university athlete over fellow nominee and ice-hockey forward Kent Johnson from Port Moody. Although the No. 5 overall selection in the 2021 NHL draft is now with the Columbus Blue Jackets, Johnson was cited for his 2021-22 NCAA season with the University of Michigan Wolverines.
“It is inspiring to be in a room filled with individuals excelling in athletics and all areas of life,” Mollenhauer said in her acceptance speech. “Thank you to my teammates. I would not be the athlete I am without them.”
Those UVic field-hockey Vikes, four-time consecutive U Sports national champions led by the brilliance of attacking-defender Mollenhauer, were nominated in the team category, but lost out to the champion UBC Thunderbirds women’s golf team.
Ukrainian import and Canadian MVP Yevgeniya Lytvynenko, of the four-time national champion Vancouver Island University Mariners women’s volleyball team — with her mind also on her family back in her homeland and who raised money through GoFundMe for her refugee sister and nephew and niece — was named sa国际传媒 college athlete of the past two years. Also nominated in that category was national MVP and Brazilian import Vitor Pereira of the 2022 Canadian champion Camosun Chargers men’s volleyball team and VIU basketball star Cameron Gay.
sa国际传媒 masters athlete of the year is golfer Shelly Stouffer of Nanoose Bay, who had a career-defining championship bonanza in 2022 by winning the U.S. senior women’s amateur title, Canadian amateur, mid-amateur and mid-master championships, sa国际传媒 senior women’s and mid-master titles, and the Pacific Northwest senior women’s championship.
At the other end of the age scale, two-time world junior hockey champion Bedard, the consensus top pick for this year’s NHL draft, skated away with the award for top junior male athlete from the province. Nominated for top female junior athlete was 15-year-old 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games diver Renée Batalla from Victoria Boardworks, with the award going to mountain biker Gracey Hemstreet.
Also nominated were Claremont lacrosse player Rory Rothnie in the high-school category and Mel Pemble of Victoria, 2022 world-champion cyclist and former skiing Paralympian, in the athlete-with-a-disability category
Canadian women’s soccer team captain Christine Sinclair of Burnaby was named recipient of the Best of sa国际传媒 Award for sustained excellence by a pro or amateur athlete over the past two years.
“Christine Sinclair is a generational athlete, and her legacy is deep and meaningful to our province,” Sport sa国际传媒 president and CEO Rob Newman said in a statement.
The Harry Jerome Comeback Award went to Rebecca Marino of Vancouver, who returned to play international pro tennis after a decade away from the game, ending the 2022 season at No. 65 on the WTA rankings.
