Thanks to everyone who came out last Saturday to our first ever Halloween wrap up party. It was a pleasant surprise to see how many of you came dressed up. Yay!
First things first, because a lot of you have been asking for the year end video! Here's the link: https://youtu.be/puHiS4DLcNA
Thanks again to Tomi for putting hours upon hours getting this perfect!
(video best viewed on desktops or on android phones - sorry iPhone users!, videos may not work on your phones)
Award Winners and Nominees
The Most Improved Paddler award typically goes to someone who has made big gains in their stroke technique or paddling performance allowing for greater contribution to the boat. This year we had a number of paddlers who really showed interest in improving their stroke and who were able to apply feedback and suggestions in practice or after video review - it was really hard to pick only a few people to acknowledge.
The nominees were: Loni, Karin, Tracy F And Julian.
This year's Most Improved Paddler is Julian.
Congratulations to him and the other nominees on a job very well done!
A special shout out to Grace for being our most-Improved steersperson as well!
The 'Hammer' award (aka Hardest Working Paddler) saw two nominees this year.
Both Tracy S and Robert were our go tos for helping to fill any boat when we had spaces available, they both competed for spots on the competitive crews in Calgary and were successful and they both attended all 4 festivals. Robert is our winner for having attended the most practices as a Paddler this year as well as continually asking himself how to improve his paddling performance in his first year with our club!
This year's Most Valuable Paddler award goes to Brent! After a hiatus from paddling, we were happy to have him back last year and thrilled when he agreed to be the steers' coach this year. He has shown incredible commitment to this role as well as to the club - literally going anywhere or doing anything that was needed for success. There were very, very few Tuesdays, Thursdays or Sundays when Brent was not available (and that doesn't include any of his note taking, emailing or scheduling steers outside of reservoir time). And who can forget his inspiring and motivating "give me one more bench" calls with amazing outcomes.
Congratulations to all of our nominees and the award winners! We are so proud of everyone's performance and results this year so thank-you paddlers for putting up with us practice after practice!
Award pictures attached
Thank-you's
A big thank-you to the new members of the executive team, a few of whom would say they were "voluntold" to take on their positions. Tomi , Laura, Jeanette and Jenn did an amazing job this year in their new roles.
Huge thanks to our coaches, who are our mentors and motivators for the entire season - Kevin, Lindsay, Carol and Brent.
To our festival planners - Anita, Lisa, Karen, Jake and Laura. And those who helped with purchasing of our snacks at these festivals, James, Charles, Grace, Tomi and Jenn!
And Stephen for putting on a great paddle camp for the Calgary Teams - even though it was cold and rainy, we all had great learnings from Scott.
Costume Winners
Thank-you to those who dressed up for the party and vied for the best costume awards. Voted by peoples choice: The best individual costume went to Robin the Shark and best team costume to the Pixie Unicorns, Aaron and Tristan. Honorable mentions for individual costume is Tracy S (who spent hours into making her leaf dress!) and team costumes, Janelle and Jess for Top Gun.
Pictures attached (photo courtesy of Tracy's fb page, with her permission of course!)
In the Making for 2018
Dryland Training - will run from January 11th to April 26 for 16 sessions with Chelsey - 7pm to 8pm. Venue will likely be Eau Claire Y and cost to be $150. We will send out email once we have everything finalized.
OC Paddle Camp - put on by Pete Baday in Tarpon Spring, Florida, the week of April 22, 2018. Pete is Team Canada's Senior B national coach and is one of Stephen's coaches. For more info or to sign up, please contact Stephen spfour@telus.net .
Hope you all enjoyed the 2017 season and looking forward to more fun times in 2018.
