Last Wednesday evening, Pontiac High School’s auditorium was filled for the school’s annual athletic banquet.
The evening was hosted by physical education teacher Chad Davis, who began with a short story about the Grade 11 male beep test record, which was set several times over the year, most recently by Gibbson Lang at 14.6.
“Gibbson broke it first term, Taytum [Thompson] broke it second term, then Gibbson re-broke it last term on his last chance to run it,” Davis said. “It was something very fun to watch transpire throughout the whole year. It is truly a great accomplishment, those levels up there are very hard. That is a great example of the athletic ability of some of our athletes.”
Nora MacKechnie also set a Grade 7 female beep test record at 11.1.
For every sport and activity, the coaches gave out a variety of awards for standout players, and there were also a slew of individual awards for overall athletic excellence by grade level.
Principal Luke McLaren closed out the evening with a big thanks to the coaches and volunteers for their efforts over the past season.
“In February of this year we did a student voice survey and approximately 70 per cent of our students are involved in some sort of extracurricular in our school,” he said. “That is an exceptional number and I would like to thank our staff members who are participating and organizing these. There’s a lot of effort and time that goes into providing these, whether it’s sports or other extracurriculars.”
Winners of individual awards were as follows:
- Grade 7 male athlete of the year: Nate Richardson
- Grade 7 female athlete of the year: Nora MacKechnie
- Grade 8 male athlete of the year: Jack Sally
- Grade 8 female athlete of the year: Ivy Thompson
- Grade 9 male athlete of the year: Griffin Lottes
- Grade 9 female athlete of the year: Mackenzie Smith
- Grade 10 male athlete of the year: Cameron Bernier
- Grade 10 female athlete of the year: Myanna Sally
- Grade 11 male athlete of the year: Gibbson Lang
- Grade 11 female athlete of the year: Lorelei Smith
- Scholar-athlete award: Garrett Rusenstrom, Julia Bernier
- Outstanding contribution to athletics, student: Julia Bernier
- Outstanding contribution to athletics, staff or volunteer: Stephen Rusenstrom
- Junior male athlete of the year: Nate Richardson
- Junior female athlete of the year: Nora MacKechnie
- Senior male athlete of the year: Gibbson Lang
- Senior female athlete of the year: Lorelei Smith
