WA Athletes Earn Recognition at Yachting WA Awards
Western Australian Institute of Sport sailors have earned recognition at the WA Yachting Awards Night, held at the South of Perth Yacht Club recently.
With awards given to coaches, officials, volunteers and athletes, WAIS had strong representation across a number or categories.
The award for Sailor of the Year with a Disability was awarded to the partnership of Colin Harrison and Russell Broaden. This followed their stunning performance over the European summer of last year, where they showed their class with a gold medal win at the ISAF Sailing World Cup in Weymouth, in addition to two silver medal wins in Hyeres and Florida.
Female Sailor of the Year was taken out by the partnership of Nia Jerwood and Lisa Smith. Their season was all but smooth, with Jerwood enduring a double knee reconstruction in January of 2015, forcing the girls to have to work tirelessly to get the team back to full competitiveness. These efforts were rewarded with a first place finish at the Sail Queensland Youth Week, Sail Freo, Sail Melbourne and Sail Sydney events, topped off with a fourth place finish at the open 420 World Championships in Japan.
Australian Sailing Team member, Matt Wearn was named winner of the Male Sailor of the Year after a very successful campaign on the world stage. With very few finishes outside of the top five, Wearn was also a finalist for the RAC Sports Star of the Year Award for 2015 and now has his sights set firmly on the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
The award for the Ron Tough Youth Foundation Silver Medal could not be split with both Alistair Young and Conor Nicholas taking out the title. Young finished the year with a first place finished at the Australian Laser Nationals and Youth National Championships along with a third place finish at Queensland Youth Week. On top of this he earned himself selection in the 2015 Australian Youth Team. Nicholas earned the award through his outstanding achievements, that including, holding; State, National and World Youth Titles simultaneously. Along with this, he managed to take out a podium finish in every Laser regatta he competed in following his second place finish at Queensland Youth Week.
The Awards night followed the recent Olympic selection of WAIS sailor Carrie Smith, who was selected to compete in the women’s 470 class earlier this month. Smith’s selection at just 21 years of age, on top of many of the award winners currently emerging into senior competition ranks, highlights a promising future for the sport of sailing in Western Australia.
Annika Lee-Jones