@bwyndavies
Vancouver, BC – On Saturday, September 28th, we hosted our First Annual Celebration of Tennis and Awards night. The event took place at the beautifully decorated Player’s Lounge at the Vancouver Lawn Tennis and Badminton Club. The aim of the evening was to gather our tennis community from across the province to celebrate the sport we love, and honour the incredible people that make up our community, such as the volunteers and athletes, through our annual Tennis BC Excellence Awards.
In addition to delicious food and drinks served by Vancouver Lawn, the evening included door prizes of Head products, electronics and even a signed tennis ball by recent US Open Champion, Bianca Andreescu. Our guests enjoyed live music by the popular local band, Dr. Strangelove.
We would like to congratulate our 2019 Tennis BC Excellence Awards recipients:
Male Player of the Year Henry Choi
Female Player of the Year Susie Lang-Gould
Junior Female Player of the Year Danielle Tuhten
Junior Male Player of the Year Stewart Aronson
High Performance Coach of the Year Graeme Kassautzki
Community Coach of the Year Matt Martin
Excellence in Officiating Chris Hilliam
Contribution to Seniors Tennis Floyd Hill
Volunteer Appreciation Loreta Di Curzio
Contribution to Community Tennis Salmon Arm Tennis Club
We would like to thank our Tennis BC Excellence Awards presenters: Mark Roberts (CEO, Tennis BC), Mark Braidwood (President, Board of Directors, Tennis BC), Oded Jacob (National Coach, Tennis Canada) and Khristina Blajkevitch (Marketing and Communications, Tennis BC). We would also like to thank our community for submitting their nominations for the Excellence Awards.
In addition to the Excellence Awards, we also took the opportunity to recognize three BC coaches who recently received TPA Excellence Awards:
Course Facilitator Excellence Award Hassan Askari
Rene Simpson-Collins Excellence Award Sarah Kadi
Gary Caron Scholarship Zack Ohlin
Out of the 6 coaches nation-wide that were recognized by the Tennis Professionals Association, three of them were from BC!
The Ed Siemens High Performance Bursary Award winners were also announced at the Celebration:
Stefanie Faith Frias Da Silva
Grace Haugen
The Ed Siemens Bursary supports one or more high performance junior athletes competing for Team BC. We were very fortunate to have Peter Jackson attend and present the this award. Peter Jackson is a former President of the Tennis BC Board of Directors.
Finally, we had the opportunity to thank and honour our retiring board members, Rick Hastings and Cyndy Bray. Rick served on the Tennis BC Board of Directors from 2014 to 2019. During his time, we saw Tennis BC and tennis in BC improve in an array of areas. During his time, Rick served as the President of the Board, and moving forward, will remain as a Past President. Rick’s enthusiasm for developing and growing the sport of tennis in BC was certainly a driving force behind Tennis BC’s success in the past 5 years. We would like to thank Rick for his time and effort on our Board of Directors.
We would like to especially thank Bertini Events for helping us put on such a successful event, as well as: Vancouver Lawn Tennis and Badminton Club, Head Tennis, Dr. Strangelove and our photographer, Bronwyn Davies.
We look forward to hosting the Second Annual Celebration of Tennis and Awards in 2020!
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