Aurora athletes are tops at Pickering College

December 4, 2013 · 0 Comments

By Jeff Doner

After the conclusion of another successful fall sports program, Pickering College recently announced the full list of awards for some of their top athletes.

Students from Aurora were well represented at the awards with 13 junior and senior students being recognized for their achievements.
Fall semester senior recipients from Aurora included:

• Andrew Kaszuba, grade 12, most valuable player in senior volleyball.
• Maurice Berleth, grade 11, most defensive player in senior volleyball.
• Kevin Spiering, grade 12, most valuable player in senior soccer.
• Andew Murphy, grade 12, coach’s award in senior soccer.
• Sonny Rogers, grade 10, most improved player in junior soccer.
• Samantha Murphy, grade 9, most valuable offensive player in U-15 soccer.
• Victoria Jonasson, grade 9, most valuable defensive player in U-15 soccer.
• Isabelle Darvay – Canavor, grade 9, coach’s soccer award in U-15.

Fall semester junior recipients from Aurora included:
• Katelyn Beswick, grade 8, top finisher in junior cross-country.
• Daniel (Jongwon) Han, grade 4, most sportsmanlike competitor in junior cross country.
• Emma Kerswill, grade 7, most valuable player in U-14 basketball.
• Meghan Beswick, grade 6, most sportsmanlike player in U-12 basketball.
• Mark Cinq-Mars, grade 6, coach’s award in U-12 soccer.

Four of these talented athletes caught up with The Auroran last week to talk about their accomplishments in their respective sports.

Katelyn Beswick just finished her third season in cross country at Pickering College and was given an award after a season where she finished seventh in three of her races and then eighteenth overall at the championship competition.

Beswick said it was an honour to be recognized by her school and peers.

“It felt really flattering because I’ve never really won an award in cross country because I’ve never really been the strongest runner until this year, when things just seemed to come along,” she said. “It was a really great experience.”

Daniel (Jongwon) Han agreed with his cross country cohort that it was nice winning an award. The grade four student hasn’t been in cross country long, but said he’s looking to keep it up.

“It was hard because it was long, but it was fun, because I like running,” he said.

Moving on to soccer, Samantha Murphy was a key cog in her team’s 3 – 2 win over the Havergal College Gators for the CISAA girls U-15 division two soccer championship.

Murphy scored all three goals for Pickering to earn a hat trick.

“It was pretty good,” she said. “We were up 2 – 0 and then they came back and made it 2 – 2 and then it went into overtime where we scored the golden goal in the last minute of overtime, so that felt pretty good to be able to win that. We won it two years ago, so it felt pretty good to do that again.”

Murphy has some big aspirations for soccer, hoping to one day play on team Canada. She also expressed pride in winning the award.

“It feels good to be able to share my achievements with the school and everyone and to also acknowledge the team’s achievement.”
In his last year at Pickering College, grade 12 student Andrew Kaszuba has been a big part of the school’s volleyball team’s for years. In that time he has seen his team grow and improve.

“It feels good, because I’ve been on the team since I was in grade 9. Unfortunately we didn’t win, but we put our best effort forward,” he said.
“It has definitely been developing and we’ve been getting a lot better every year. We’re getting better and better players each year. When I was in grade nine, we played in tier three, which is a bit easier, and we didn’t win. We won the next year in grade 10 and then made the jump up to tier two. I thought we were just going to have the toughest time competing against these teams, but we actually did really well.”

Winning the most valuable player award for senior volleyball this year and last, Kaszuba hopes to be able to keep playing volleyball while possibly studying business in university.