Another year, another round of athletes at St. Patrick High School getting recognized for what they do.
The school hosted its annual awards banquet on Tuesday evening and the Irish were a busy bunch during the scholastic year that was.
Tobi Dusome, the school's phys-ed department head, said it was a full house with lots of awards.
“In total, we handed out 235 awards to our student athletes across all sports and that's hockey, basketball, track and field, even football,” she said.
Included in each sport were awards for the Most Improved, Most Valuable and the Heart and Hustle, which is one of Dusome's favourites.
“There's just something about the Heart and Hustle that I love,” she said. “You have the best in your sport but the Heart and Hustle just makes it all worth it. They're the ones who are out there giving everything and I'm so happy they get recognized.”
Figuring out who gets the awards is up to the coaches in each sport. They sit down with Dusome at the end of each season to go over who was the most worthy.
“The coaches take a look at everything and see who's most deserving,” she said. “I'm there as the head of the phys-ed department to break any ties, if there are any, but the coaches are the ones who come up with their choices.”
As for the students, Dusome said they fill out a form to keep tabs of what sport they play and any other involvement sport-wise in the community, she added. Several students were given special awards as part of the evening for the work they did outside of the school in coaching or volunteering.
“It's a lot of people to keep track of,” said Dusome.
Each grade also has their Athletes of the Year. For the boys, this year's winners included Gabriel Fillion, Christopher Mathison, Jordan Balsillie, Austin Daniels and Matteo Bertolini while the roll of honour for the girls included Katie Genge, Emily Carroll, Katie Hart, Hannah Courtoreille and Dakota Earle.
The evening ended with a slide show put together by Rob Hart and Dusome said it's amazing that he can even get it together.
“We have such a short turnaround from track and field because our banquet is only a few days after that,” she said. “I don't know how he does it but he did another amazing job.”
More than 300 people were in attendance for the evening and Dusome said the response has been nothing but positive.
“Lots of good feedback from parents,” she said. “One thing we did this year was have the students sit up front while the awards were being presented and I think that went over really well. They were right there and you could hear some chuckling and giggles, especially when I butchered a name or a funny photo came up. Overall, it went so smoothly and our administration supports this a lot.”