The city’s athletic best for 2018 will be honoured Tuesday night when the St. John’s Athlete of the Year awards will be presented at City Hall.
The 68th annual event gets underway 7:30 p.m. in the Foran/Greene Room.
The winner of the male athlete of the year receives the Tom “Dynamite” Dunne Memorial Award, while the Margaret “Mag” Davis Memorial Award goes to the female winner. The team of the year receives the Molson Award.
Finalists for male athlete of the year are rugby player Campbell Clarke, Paralympian Liam Hickey and hockey player Alex Newhook, while artistic swimmer Catherine Barrett, hockey player Maggie Connors and soccer player Teri Murphy are in the running for female athlete of the year.
Finalists for team of the year are the Atlantic Rock under-19 rugby team, Brad Gushue curling team and Holy Cross men’s soccer team.
MALE ATHLETE OF THE YEAR
CAMPBELL CLARKE
Clarke was a member of Canada’s under-20 team that competed in the Junior World Trophy Championship last summer. Clarke started two games, an incredible feat given he was an under-17 player at the time of selection.
He was also the starting outside half for the province’s under-19 team which won the silver medal at nationals last summer.
Clarke is also an outstanding hockey player, playing for St. Andrew’s College in Aurora, Ont.
LIAM HICKEY
Hickey, the 2016 and 2017 St. John’s athlete of the year, was a member of Canada’s silver medal team in Para hockey at the 2018 Paralympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
The Canadians lost 2-1 in overtime to the United States in the gold-medal game.
Playing in his second Paralympics — he was part of Canada's basketball team in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games — Hickey tied for second in team scoring with six goals and five assists in five games.
ALEX NEWHOOK
Newhook took the Tier II junior British Columbia Hockey League by storm last season, finishing eighth in league scoring with 22 goals and 66 points in 45 games for the Victoria Grizzlies.
Newhook was the league’s rookie of the year, and was named the top first-year player in Canadian junior A hockey.
Through the first half of the 2018-19 season, Newhook was leading the league in scoring, and was part of the Canada West squad which competed in the 2018 World Junior A Challenge.
Last year, Newhook committed to attend Boston College starting next season.
FEMALE ATHLETE OF THE YEAR
CATHERINE BARRETT
Barrett took another step — or given her sport, another stroke — towards competing in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics when she was named to the 2019 Canadian artistic (synchronized) swimming senior national team.
Barrett, who trains at the Ontario Regional Training Centre in Toronto, has made a rapid rise through the national team program, starting out on the Canadian 13-15 team in 2015, then moving on to the junior national and senior Nextgen squads in 2017.
She was part of Canada's 11-athlete junior artistic (synchro) swimming team at the 2018 world junior championships in Budapest, Hungary.
MAGGIE CONNORS
Connors helped the Canadian under-18 hockey team win the bronze medal at the world championship in Russia, picking up three points in six games. Last summer, she attended the national under 22 team’s Summer Showcase in Calgary.
Connors finished up five years at Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school in Minnesota last year, winning the U19 U.S. national championship as a 17-year-old.
She started her first season on the NCAA highly-ranked Princeton Tigers in the fall, and has been one of team’s the top performers as a freshman.
TERI MURPHY
Murphy was one of the reasons why Holy Cross won a third straight provincial Jubilee Trophy women’s championship last year, going unbeaten in the process.
A midfielder, Murphy’s dominant play not only saw her defend, but contribute to the Crusaders’ attack. She finished the year with 13 goals, good enough for second place in league scoring.
She was named to the Jubilee Trophy all-star team.
In addition to that, Murphy played for Memorial University and was an Atlantic University Sport conference all-star. She was the Newfoundland and Labrador Soccer Association’s senior female player of the year.
TEAM OF THE YEAR
ATLANTIC ROCK
The Rock came up just short of winning the national under-19 rugby championship last July, losing 17-13 to Ontario in the gold-medal game in Saskatoon, Sask.
It was a rematch of a preliminary-round game that had seen the Newfoundland team prevail 35-19.
The final was the first loss of the tournament for the Rock, which finished 3-1 overall, including a 17-7 victory over British Columbia in semifinal play.
The Rock's Jack McCarthy led the entire tournament with six tries, including two in the final.
BRAD GUSHUE CURLING TEAM
The team of skip Brad Gushue, vice-skip Mark Nichols, Brett Gallant and Geoff Walker won their second straight Tim Hortons Brier Canadian curling championship with a 6-4 victory over Brendan Bottcher's young Alberta team.
The win came almost to the day after they won the 2017 Brier in St. John’s. The 2018 Brier win came in Regina, Sask. where they were wearing Team Canada's colours.
So good was Gushue in the Brier playoffs that he curled a perfect 100 per cent in the Page playoff 1-2 game against John Epping, and 96 per cent in the final.
Those numbers made him the Hec Gervais Award winner as MVP.
The team headed to Las Vegas to defend its world championship, but lost 7-3 to Sweden's Niklas Edin in the gold-medal game.
HOLY CROSS
The Crusaders men’s team won its third straight Johnson’s Challenge Cup provincial championship in 2018, going 15-4-1 along the way.
Holy Cross travelled to Saskatoon, Sask. for the nationals, and reached the bronze-medal game — nobody expected the Crusaders to be playing for a medal — where they lost in heartbreaking fashion, 2-1 to the host province on penalty kicks.
Holy Cross and Saskatchewan scored on their five penalty kicks before Saskatchewan found the mark again on their sixth shot.
Then Saskatoon Revolution keeper Michael Bandula foiled the Crusaders on their sixth kick to seal the Saskatchewan victory.