Softball Canada Announces 2013 Award Winners

(Ottawa, ON) Softball Canada is pleased to announce the following award winners who will be recognized at the Softball Canada Hall of Fame and Awards Banquet on November 16th, 2013 in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. The Banquet will be held in conjunction with the Softball Canada Congress and Annual General Meeting, which will take place from November 14-16. As previously announced, Jimm Barr (Official, Northwest Territories), Paul Gard (Builder, Northwest Territories) and Adam Smith (Athlete, Ontario) will be inducted into the Softball Canada Hall of Fame during this Banquet.

The Home Run Sports Coach of the Year award will be presented to Haylee O’Neill from Oakville, Manitoba. Haylee coached Team Manitoba to a Silver medal at the Canada Summer Game – Manitoba’s highest finish at the event – and was also named a Women’s National Team Pool Coach earlier this year. As Softball Manitoba’s Master Learning Facilitator, she trains and develops Learning Facilitators to deliver the NCCP as well as passing her knowledge and experiences on to coaches by facilitating NCCP clinics. In addition, she is the Coordinator for Softball Manitoba’s Junior Clinician Program which trains young adults to be skills clinicians and is also involved in the Inner City Youth Softball Development Program.

Brent Chadwick, from Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, has been selected as the recipient of the Home Run Sports Umpire of the Year award. Brent has been umpiring for over twenty years, and was very busy with major tournaments this year. He umpired at the ISF Junior Women’s World Championship in Brampton and served as Deputy Umpire in Chief at the U21 Men’s International Championship in Saskatoon in addition to working the local Senior Men’s and Women’s tournaments and Western Collegiate Softball Association games in Saskatchewan. He is a master instructor/evaluator for Softball Saskatchewan, and has served on their Umpire Development Committee for almost 14 years.

The Rose Hodgson Volunteer of the Year award will be presented to Floyd Daniels from Hay River, Northwest Territories. For nearly a decade, Floyd has donated his time to sit on the Board of Directors for NWT Softball. Currently, Floyd serves as the Vice-President of Minor Ball in the Territory. The community of Hay River, NT is the main beneficiary of Floyd’s hard work where he is recognized as the driving force behind the Bantam, Midget and Junior programs. Floyd helped coach Team NWT at the U21 Men’s International Championship in Saskatoon, SK this summer, and has been helping develop young pitchers in the territory.

This year’s recipients of the Claude Deschamps Memorial Fund are Jessica Raymond from Waterloo, Ontario and Tom Fischer from Teeswater, Ontario.

Jessica Raymond, a fifth year Bachelor of Applied Media Studies student at the University of Guelph – Humber, is the captain of the Humber Hawks Varsity Softball team of the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association and also played with the Brantford Intermediate Lady Red Sox this summer. She led the Humber Hawks to the OCAA Championship the last two years, and recently competed in the Canadian Collegiate Softball Association Championship in London, ON.

Tom Fischer recently began his second year at the University of Western Ontario in the Bachelor of Engineering Science program. He is a member of the Wiarton Red Devils, who won the Gold medal at this year’s U21 Men’s Provincial Championship and went on to win Gold at the U21 Men’s Canadian Championship in Owen Sound. He also played with his local Belmore Stingers and Chepstow Aces teams.

The Ethel Boyce Memorial Award will be awarded to Rachel Proctor from Surrey, BC and Nicole Swett from Kelowna, BC.

Rachel Proctor is in her second year at Simon Fraser University, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Health Sciences. As a player, she competed with the Simon Fraser Clan in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference in NCAA Division II – finishing second place – and was also a member of the Senior Women’s White Rock Renegades who won the Women’s Elite Division of the Scotiabank Canadian Open Fastpitch International Championship.

Nicole Swett, from Kelowna, BC, recently began her first year of a Bachelor of Applied Science in Environmental Engineering at the University of Waterloo. She graduated from Rutland Secondary School in June, and competed with the Kelowna Warriors of the Kelowna Minor Fastball Association this summer, winning three Most Valuable Player medals in 2013.

The Softball Canada Hall of Fame and Awards Banquet will be streamed on Softball Canada’s website starting at 8:00pm MST (10:00pm EST) on Saturday, November 16. The video will also be available on Softball Canada’s Google+ and YouTube pages to be viewed anytime.

Congratulations to all of this year’s award winners!

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For more information, please contact:

Gilles LeBlanc
Manager – Marketing and Communications
Softball Canada
gleblanc@softball.ca
(613) 523-3386 ext. 3105