The best of the best in high school athletics were celebrated at Humboldt Collegiate Institute's athletics banquet on June 11.
It was the school's first all-sports banquet; in previous years, individual teams had held their own celebrations. Also new were awards for the developmental teams, introduced this year to give younger students a chance to ease into the sport before moving up to a higher level of competition.
Held in the school's atrium, the banquet featured dinner and a speech from guest Brian Munz, an HCI graduate and current radio play-by-play voice of the Winnipeg Jets.
Co-athletic directors Shaun Gardiner and Kerri Archibald handed out the awards for the varsity and developmental teams in each sport before turning to the major awards.
The developmental athlete of the year award ended in a tie for both the boys and girls: Jared Giddings and Genesis Legaspi shared it for the boys, while Angela Baran and Mackenzie Senko split the honours for the girls.
Next came the awards for senior athletes of the year. Gardiner made a brief speech outlining the criteria, noting that multi-sport athletes are at an advantage.
"You can win this award by only playing one sport, but you have to show exceptional talent," Gardiner said. "I'm thinking of someone like Brianne Theisen," the track and field Olympian whose name litters the pages of HCI's athletic history.
It's unlikely that there were any future Olympians in the crowd on that night, but two exceptional athletes, Josh Ewen and Brianna Smith, rose above the rest to take the senior athlete of the year awards.
Other winners included:
Developmental football: Tristan Hering, Dylan Meyers
Boys soccer: Josh Ewen
Girls soccer: Taylor Wittke
Developmental boys volleyball: Jared Giddings
Developmental girls volleyball: Morgan Lueke
Golf: Jett Tuchscherer
Senior girls volleyball: Amy Hergott
Senior boys volleyball: Josh Ewen
Cross country: Stephen Revering
Curling: Matthew Sokolan
Developmental boys basketball: Logan Seipp
Senior boys basketball: Josh Ewen
Developmental girls basketball: Julie Syroteuk
Senior girls basketball: Mackenzie Mueller
Badminton: Carley Lepsenyi, Logan Wylie
Track and field: Daisy Hart, Justin Lefebvre
Girls flag football: Taylor Wittke
