A new award introduced this year; we have decided that the category of Coach of the Year" needed to be expanded a little bit. We find ourselves in the wonderful position of having coaches who are returning year after year and thought that the time was right to expand the criteria to include some people who are a little more behind the scenes that ought to be recognized. This is not to say that coaches cannot be considered for this award because they most certainly have been. All of our AAA coaches have been considered on the simple fact that they, like all of our coaches, work full time jobs off campus and then come to Vanier where they work an additional 20-30 hours per week -- I sincerely hope that you athletes take the time to show your appreciation to them. Some of our other coaches have had outstanding seasons results wise, such as rugby who won their championship and football who made it all the way to the final.

Others that have been given consideration are people like:
Liz in Admissions, who spends tons of time liaising with me and the coaches about our recruits,
Marilyn in advising who helps the athletes so much with schedule building and getting organized to go to the next level, whether it is the NCAA Clearing House or CIS schools.
Terry Meldrum who is a volunteer academic coach
Dany Brown SS who helps us out wherever required and
Ian Mac Arthur PE Coordinator who is always there to support the athletes
Jim Atkinson SS who helps us with football stats
Rick Yuen - not only FFB Coach but who has helped get tennis back on the books
Paul Fournier who handles security and always bails me out when I forget to arrange parking passes for referees…
Tara Grenier our head athletic therapist and all of her assistants who are volunteers: Alicia, Joey, Cynthia, Marc-Andre, Georges, David and JF.

So many people ... but we have decided to honor someone this year who has volunteered with our program since he was a student in 1993. He came to us with an interest in sports and particularly in one specialized area. He was a rather shy young man and his interest seemed to be a wee bit out of character, but we agreed to let him get involved as a "back up". The position he was interested in was being filled at the time by a very capable returning student, and while we hated to discourage anybody who was interested in volunteering, we felt we had our bases pretty well covered with our current choice. The incumbent at that time was a fellow by the name of Herbie Kuhn who ultimately graduated and moved to Toronto and became the public address announcer for the Toronto Raptors. Herbie's graduation gave Donny the opening he was waiting for and he jumped right in. It has been a pleasure to watch Donny's growth over the years -- when he started, the text had to be completely written out from "Welcome to Vanier College and here are tonight's starting five" to "Please have a safe drive home". Now we are able to sit back and enjoy the action while our "pro" handles the whole event. Our only worry now is that there are other schools and event organizers who are trying to steal him away.

It is my pleasure to ask Director of Human Resources, Stan Unger to present the inaugural Outstanding Contribution Award to the "Voice of the Cheetahs" -- Donny Insogna.