Avalon Wasteneys of Campbell River had her golden moment in Tokyo and Micah Zandee-Hart of Saanichton in Beijing. The Olympic gold medallists are up for female athlete of the year as the nominees were announced for the 55th Sport B.C. awards ceremony to take place March 9 at the Vancouver Convention Centre.
Former UVic Vikes rowing star Wasteneys keyed the Olympic champion Canadian women’s eight in the delayed Tokyo Summer Games and blue-liner Zandee-Hart won gold with Canada in hockey at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. They are up against Julia Grosso of Burnaby, who scored the dramatic winning kick in the shootout as Canada captured Olympic soccer gold in Tokyo.
Two codes of hockey highlight the university-athlete nominees list which includes UVic field hockey standout and U Sports MVP Anna Mollenhauer, also a member of the senior national team in the 2022 World Cup and Birmingham Commonwealth Games, and ice hockey forward Kent Johnson from Port Moody. Although the No. 5 overall selection in the 2021 NHL draft is now with the Columbus Blue Jackets, Johnson was cited for his 2021-22 NCAA season with the University of Michigan Wolverines.
Ukrainian-import and Canadian MVP Yevgeniya Lytvynenko of the four-time national champion Vancouver Island University Mariners women’s volleyball team, with her mind also on her family back in her homeland and who raised money through GoFundMe for her refugee sister and nephew and niece, is nominated as college athlete of the year. Also nominated in that category is national MVP and Brazilian-import Vitor Pereira of the 2022 Canadian-champion Camosun Chargers men’s volleyball team and VIU basketball star Cameron Gay.
Hockey prodigy and two-time world junior champion Connor Bedard of North Vancouver is nominated for top male junior athlete and 15-year-old 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games diver Renée Batalla from Victoria Boardworks Club for best female junior athlete.
Claremont lacrosse player Rory Rothnie is up for best high school athlete. Multi-threat Mel Pemble of Victoria, 2022 world-champion cyclist and former skiing Paralympian, is nominated in the athlete-with-a-disability category and Shelly Stouffer of Nanoose Bay, dominant in senior golf across North America last year, in the masters athlete category.
The four-time consecutive U Sports field hockey national champion UVic Vikes are nominated in the team category.
