At age 51, World renowned bodybuilder Hugh Ross has managed to etch his name into the local history books as one of the oldest recipients of Guyana’s Sportsman of the Year award. He was adjudged winner of this prestigious award by a panel assembled by the National Sports Commission (NSC).
Ross, a former Guyana Defence Force captain, who still works in law enforcement in Brooklyn, New York, was voted recipient of the prestigious award after winning the Mr. Universe Over-50 title last October in the United Kingdom. Former West Indies skipper Ramnaresh Sarwan won the Sportsman of the Year award last year.
Leg-spinner Devendra Bishoo, 25, was adjudged runner up to Ross, ahead of record-breaking powerlifter Randolph Morgan, who also won a Central American and Caribbean Sports Organisation (CACSO) gold medal in 2010.
National junior sprint champion Chavez Ageday sped away with the Junior Sportsman of the Year Award, having managed to place fourth in the B final of the Inaugural Youth Olympics in Singapore last year. Ageday had also qualified for both the 100m and 200m final at the South American Under-23 championships in Medellin, Colombia last March.
Shondell Alfred won the Sportswoman of the Year award, while two- time Commonwealth track and field medallist Aliann Pompey, a previous winner of the award, was adjudged runner-up. Alfred gained a unanimous decision to defeat Corrine ‘Sexy Panther’ De Groot in September 2009 to win the vacant WIBA Bantamweight title, and she knocked out De Groot last June in their mandatory rematch. Alfred was overlooked for the award last year, when Nicolette Fernandes, the world’s “Most Improved Squash Player of 2009”, won the award.
Apart from her Commonwealth silver medal, Pompey also broke Guyana’s national indoor record and copped a silver medal in her 400m race at the CAC Games.
Sportswoman of the Year, Shondell Alfred
Prodigious table tennis player Chelsea Edghill followed in the footsteps of her role models Michelle John and Trenace Lowe to win the Junior Sportswoman of the Year award before her 15th birthday. Chelsea, a second form student at Bishops High School, won the Under-13 category of the Caribbean Table Tennis (CTT) Cadet Championships in 2010, and made it to the quarterfinals of the Pan American Mini Cadet TT Championships after upsetting a top ranked Peruvian player.
Chelsea, who also won the national U18, U15 and U13 titles, edged out two-time CARIFTA Games 1500m champion Jevina Straker, who also, apart from defending her CARIFTA Games title in the same year that she wrote CXC, attended the Youth Olympic Games. Straker, 16, placed fourth in the B finals at the world class event in the girls 1000m.
Guyana’s first ever CARIFTA Swimming Championship gold medallist, Jessica Stephenson, who returned to CARIFTA last year after missing last year due to a career threatening shoulder injury, did not gain enough votes for this award.
Jessica, in her miraculous comeback to CARFITA in 2010, won two gold medals and one bronze, and later bettered her personal best time
Junior Sportsman of the Year , Chavez Ageday
when she attending the CAC and Commonwealth Games.
Caribbean Under-19 Squash champion Ashley Khalil, who won the Junior Sportswoman of the Year award in 2007, was the runner-up in this year. However, 14- year-old Victoria Arjoon, who has won four consecutive Caribbean squash titles, was not nominated.
The Guyana national football team, Lady Jags, which is comprised predominantly of overseas-based players, was named Sports Team of the Year, while the Powerlifting team was named runner up. The Guyana national sevens rugby team, the Mighty Jaguars, which won their fifth straight North American and Caribbean Rugby Association (NACRA) and CACSO Inaugural tournaments on home soil at the Guyana National Stadium, did not secure enough votes to retain the award, which they had won last year.
