8 Ottawa National Diving Club athletes recognized at Dive Ontario Awards Banquet.

News › 8 Ottawa National Diving Club athletes recognized at Dive Ontario Awards Banquet.

19 October, 2017

This past weekend marked a very special occasion! Dive Ontario celebrated its first Awards Banquet in over 20 years! With over 95 people in attendance, clubs from all across our great province gathered in Toronto to celebrate our athletes’ achievements and provincial accomplishments from the 2016-2017 competitive season.

I am very pleased to say that the Ottawa National Diving Club had 8 athletes recognized for their unbelievable results and accomplishments. Unfortunately 2 of our athletes were unable to attend however the 6 athletes that were in attendance had a great time celebrating the highlights of the season.

The Ottawa National Diving Club had 6 athletes reach the top of the podium at the provincial level last season and were rewarded with the Outstanding Diver Award for their respective age categories. Congratulations to Jeffrey Meier and Maya Rana in the Tier 2, now renamed Aspire level, and congratulations to Emma Corrigan, Kathryn Grant, Timothy Lewis and Catherine Boyer at the national level!

It is important to mention that our club had the most outstanding diver awards coming from 1 club. Huge congratulations to ONDC!  After these awards were completed Dive Ontario announced the official Team Ontario list of athletes.  From the ONDC, Emma Corrigan, Kathryn Grant, Catherine Boyer, Audree Howes and Timothy Lewis all accomplished this amazing feat! Congratulations ONDC 🙂 In order to be named to this list, an athlete must have achieved a score equal to 90% of international standards.

Another special achievement highlighted over the weekend was Catherine Boyer’s provincial record breaking performances on 3m and tower! These highlights were celebrated by giving the divers an old LP record and having them smash them. A very cool way to highlight incredible performances.

To finish off the evening awards, Dive Ontario presented two awards to highlight outstanding people outside of the world of results. An award for perseverance highlighting an athlete’s ability to overcome adversity or challenges and attain their goals was given out and an award highlighting a volunteer of the year for 2017. I am honoured to say that Marianne Stintzi was the recipient of the Perseverance Award and was met with a standing ovation from the entire province! The final award of the evening was the Volunteer of the Year award. This award had many strong applicants and I would like to take a moment to thank them for all their contributions to the sport of diving. One submission trumped them all and that was Kathleen Murphy. She was nominated by Brennan Villemaire, her son, and the submission was kept a secret from her until he gave a speech announcing what she does for her club and the province and announcing that she was the recipient of the award. Words cannot describe the feeling in the room but I thank everyone that was there to make a moment like that so special. If you would like to read up on Marianne or Kathleen’s incredible stories follow this link.

I want to take the time to thank all of Dive Ontario for making this event a reality! One person in particular is Dive Ontario’s executive director Pam Julian! I know it was a short time frame but somehow she managed to pull everything together and deliver an event that marks to start to something truly special for our province! So thank you Pam for your outstanding efforts! From my perspective, the Awards banquet was well received by all and we at the Ottawa National Diving Club are ecstatic to see what accomplishments we get to celebrate next season!