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North East Disability Sports Achievement Awards

ITV presenter, Ian Payne, hosted this year’s npower North East Disability Sports Achievement Awards celebration lunch held at Durham County Cricket Club yesterday.  Over 120 guests attended the celebration, including paralympian and world champion, Stephen Miller, David Harker, chief executive of Durham County Cricket Club and Gordon Neale OBE, director of events, Disability Sports Events.

Seven sports awards were presented to individuals and clubs across the North East including Northumberland’s Keith and Shirley Knox from Bedlington for winning the award for Service to Sport.  Northumberland Sport would like to congratulate them both on a richly deserved award.

 

The winner of the Male Personality of the Year Award was John Robertson from Sunderland. John has been sailing since he was a boy. After a motorcycle accident, when he was in his twenties, he continued with the sport using a specially adapted boat. He has qualified as a member of the Great Britain team for Beijing later this year and recently brought home a Bronze medal from the Rolex Miami Olympic Class Regatta after competing in the Sonar Class.

 

Female Personality of the Year went to gymnast, Penny Watson, from Darlington. South Sunderland Swimming Club took the Club of the Year title with Ashleigh Rutherford from Killingworth presented with the Young Female Achiever of the Year Award and Richard Yuille’s had a wonderful sixteenth birthday as he was presented with the Young Male Achiever of the Year trophy and a Durham County Cricket Club shirt signed by the entire team.

 

Richard, who lives in Berwick Hills in Middlesbrough, was a member of the North of England team at the Junior Athletics Championships last year, where he won two gold and a silver medals.

 

A new award for 2008 is the npower Partnership Award. It was presented to England Athletics North East Region for its outstanding commitment to disability sport over the past 12 months.

 

Gary Doig, npower’s community involvement manager, comments: “England Athletics has been incredibly proactive in the North East, facilitating teacher, coach & volunteer awareness courses, county athletics development sessions, new disability development support for key ‘hub clubs’ and the coordination of the 2008 DSE Junior Regional athletics championships.

 

“The team’s work has created new opportunities for disabled people in the North East to participate in athletics.”

 

Patrick Bonner, EFDS North East Regional Development Manager, believes the awards celebration recognises the achievements of the region’s athletes, saying: “These awards are a fantastic way to celebrate the successes of our disabled sports stars in the North East. The awards are also a great opportunity to acknowledge some of the fantastic work that clubs, organisations and individual volunteers do in the region. This is the sixth year npower has sponsored our EFDS sports programme and awards, and we have certainly seen the huge value their contribution has made to disability sport in the North East.”