WAIS athletes and coaches have come home with the five major awards at Western Australia’s sporting night of nights – The 2008 ANZ Sports Star Awards.
In front of a crowd of over 600 at the Burswood Entertainment Centre WAIS athletes were named winners of The West Australian ANZ Sports Star of the Year, the Winter-Strickland Medal, the Channel 7 Team of the Year, the Smarter Than Smoking Junior Sports Star of the Year while a WAIS coach was named KPMG Coach of the Year.
In what has been come a familiar sight since the end of the Beijing Olympics, pole vaulter Steve Hooker was once again the star of the show as he was named the prestigious The West Australian ANZ Sports Star of the Year for 2008. The 26-year old was an unanimous choice of the judging panel after his absorbing gold medal winning and Olympic record setting performance in Beijing’s Birds Nest.
Hooker won the award ahead of a stellar field of 12 finalists which included a number of WAIS’s other star Olympic performers.
The gold medallist wasn’t done with just the one award however, with his WA Olympic peers naming him the recipient of the Winter-Strickland Medal. The medal, which honours WA’s first male (high jumper John Winter) and female (sprinter Shirley Strickland) Olympic gold medallists, recognises the most outstanding performance by a Western Australian Olympian at the most recent Summer and Winter Olympic Games.
WAIS’s gold medal winning sailors Elise Rechichi and Tessa Parkinson continued the Institute’s outstanding night by taking out the Channel 7 Team of the Year award. Rechichi and Parkinson combined in the 470 class in Beijing and won the event, overcoming a number of serious setbacks along the road to China.
The final award taken out by a WAIS athlete was the Smarter Than Smoking Junior Sports Star of the Year. Individual Athlete Support Program athlete Jessica Moore was named the recipient of the award after a 2008 tennis season that saw her make the junior singles final of the Australian Open and win junior doubles titles at the French Open and Wimbledon.
