Last week I attended the Three Lakes Avengers Athletic Awards banquet in Middle Lake and this week I will be attending the Humboldt Collegiate Institute Athletic Awards banquet.
What a great way to recognize some of the athletes on their tremendous hard work over the course of the athletic season.
As students get older their workloads get bigger, they start to get jobs, and they have practices to attend. It can become a lot of work to balance all that is on the plate of a teenager and to do so well that they capture provincial medals is really impressive.
These impressive feats deserve to be recognized and the best athletes or leaders or most improved athletes see a payoff in the end.
And the athletes who may feel snubbed or disappointed for not being an award winner are provided added motivation for the next season so they too can become a winner.
Admittedly in small town Saskatchewan it is not always easy to find the funding to support hosting an awards night, which is a shame and a painful reality we face in today’s society. Those athletes too deserve to be recognized.
Athletes at every school work very hard all year and are not only representing themselves, but they are also representing their school and their community.
I am not a big believer in free hand outs in sports because I think it leads to a sense of entitlement among the athletes but to recognize the top athletes is important because it shows that the school and the community appreciate the effort, skill level, and leadership they brought every time they stepped on the field or on the court.
The banquet also provides the school with the opportunity to bring in a guest speaker.
In Middle Lake, the Avengers had the opportunity to welcome Kirk Muyres to the school. Muyres is a curler and is currently a member of Team Laycock who is a top ten team on the World Curling Tour.
Muyres is just 25 years old and grew up in nearby St. Gregor. Bringing in a local resident who is young and has already achieved great things including winning a Tim Horton’s Brier bronze medal in 2015 is a wonderful opportunity as well for the athletes because although a lot of times athletes can dream of being a successful athlete and can work towards it, there is still that little piece of the brain that tells them that they are from a small town in Saskatchewan with the odds not in their favour.
To have a local athlete share his story, it can provide the athletes with that little bit extra positive reinforcement that they can make it, they just have to work extremely hard for it and have to believe.
So for schools to provide those opportunities and to recognize the athletes for their contributions throughout the athletics season is a positive. Keep it up.
And for the schools who cannot. It is understandable, hopefully one day the funding will be there so you too can provide your students with these banquets as well.
