Awards!

As April is upon Southern Ontario, so is the end of the ski season (despite the snowfall of last week). With the end of the ski season comes the inevitable awards season! This is the part of the year where people are recognized for their hard work, dedication to the team or overall awesomeness. This year's awards are as follows:

MVP (or MVS):
Awarded yearly for best performance on the team, or contributions above and beyond, the MVS is fairly self explanatory. If you haven't figured it out, if you're an MVS, you're pretty much entitled to whatever you want. Rides to practise, fluoro's on your skis at races, bagels out of the rookies lunches, you name it, you got it.

Female MVS: Nellie Dow
No surprises here. Nellie Dow has been outstanding her past 2 years of OUA Competition, All-Starring twice. This year she capped off her season with a 4th place at OUA's, a personal-best. On top of that, she was the Women's Team Captain and maintained a full courseload with a high average, as is evidenced by her intimate knowledge of the 3rd floor of the Dana Porter Library, as well as being able to tell you exactly how many books are in the St. Jerome's Library.

Male MVS: Kieran T. Jones
From his point of view, also no surprise, but for the rest of the team, who realized that listening to Kieran Jones was a waste of time, it came as a shock. Jones, in his third season with the Warriors, posted several personal best finishes, including an 11th place monster-come-from-behind-pull-out-all-the-stops-un-real-storm-the-finish-line performance on the Classic Mass Start day at OUA Championships. Overall at OUA's Jones finished in 16th as UW's top male skier. Described as a "team leader" who was "dedicated to practise" and was in general an "all-around great guy" by Head Coach Faulkner, Jones, for possibly the first time ever in his life, deserved an award which he received.

Most Improved
Almost as important as the MVS category, the most improved goes out to those who pulled up their socks from the previous year. This is usually acheived through an increased dedication to training, a significant decline in academic performance, or by failing the drug tests at OUA Championships.

Male: Yudai Nakagawa
Without a doubt the strongest member of the UW ski team, last year Yudai Nakagawa relied mostly on his gigantic calves and sleep deprivation to propel him to success on the ski trails. This year, with renewed dedication to physical activity, Nakagawa quickly became the bouldering and slacklining expert on the ski team. With his focus shifting away from legs and onto the upper body, he improved greatly, moving from placing 39th and 34th in the 2008 OUA Champs to 29th and 27th at the 2009 OUA Champs, and thus is well deserving of the 'Most Improved' Title.

Female: Kelly Skinner
Without a doubt the shortest member of the UW ski team, Kelly Skinner is also the only mother on the team. Taking last year off to have her first of what will undoubtably become countless children put a damper on her training and racing for the season, but Skinner returned with a vegenance and a baby jogger this past fall. Again, not to harp on this point or anything, but following the grand tradition of birthing mothers turning in hot ski seasons, Skinner placed far better this year than her last two competitive seasons, in '07 and'05 respectively.

Rookie of the Year
Always hotly contested, as rookies generally come in with great enthusiasm, ideals and acne, this year the competition was a little different. While UW did have the requisite baby-faced, pre-drinking age, cut-the-crusts-off-my-white-bread-peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich rookie in Nolan Beanlands, the team also featured some more elderly first-timers who managed to steal the coveted award. Presented for dedication to the team, exceptional performances or bringing a much needed fresh presence, the ROY always goes to those who deserve it.

Male ROY: Andrew Jeffery
Much has been made of this young man for the entire ski season. Be it his uncanny resemblance to the University of Guelph's John Rennie, his unrelenting dedication to a massive pile of curricular and extra-curricular activities, or his willingness to come out for the varsity ski team in his third year at UW, Andrew Jeffery pretty much did everything a rookie could and then some. Somewhere in the middle of laying down consistently the best performances on the UW team throughout the OUA qualifiers and the UW time trial season while at the same time juggling intramural ice-hockey, ball-hockey, six courses and volunteering, AJ became the standout for Rookie of the Year.

Female ROY: Jessica Stevenson
Much like Andrew Jeffery, Jessica Stevenson waited until her 3rd year at UW to join the team. An shadowy, ghost-like figure for most of the fall due to coop commitments, Stevenson had the misfortune of joining the ski team at the beginning of Winter Term, thus missing out on the many team building opportunies in the fall. Luckily for us, however, Jess is neither wierd nor socially awkward, so after a few nights at Bechtel Park getting frostbite together, things were pretty much normal. A previous standout for Foothills Nordic, Jess took 3 years off racing and her willingness to get back onto the boards after such a layoff earned her the title of Rookie of the Year.


The 'Final Climb' Award
Named after the last race in the Tour de Ski which features a ski race up a downhill run, gaining approximatly 425 vertical meters in 3km, this award is doled out to those who take the most possible pain in a season. The 'Final Climb' in the Tour is done on a voluntary basis, so to achieve this award it must be the same. Getting hit by a car while rollerskiing, closing your finger in the van door or falling on the S-Turn at Highlands and having to spend 20 minutes picking trees out of your belly button because of your own idiocy does not count.

Derek Hartman and Martha Sutton
Split between the two because the panel couldn't decide who suffered more, both Hartman and Sutton struggled valiantly - and finished. Martha managed to sustain a knee injury early in the fall which kept her in a knee brace and unable to train for the majority of the season, but, determined to give the UW Women's team the best possible shot at success, came to OUA Champs anyway.
While Hartman was not injured for quite as long, a groin injury in the middle of January limited his on-snow racing and intensity sessions, throwing a wrench into his plans for the ski season. What was the best shape of his life quickly became a nightmare, as at OUA's he was restricted to large amounts double-poling. Despite this, Hartman still managed to post OUA personal best placings.