CBS edging towards big numbers in provincial sports nominations, says Bent

By Craig Westcott

Athletes from Conception Bay South were well represented at the annual Sport NL awards, says councillor-at-large Rex Hillier.
At council’s April 15 meeting, Hillier ran through the list of winners and nominees from CBS at this spring’s gala.
Unlike many awards programs, there is no self-nomination when it comes to the Sports NL honours: nominations must come from the athletes’ parent sports organizations.
“We had five people who were finalists in the awards and we had two winners,” said Hillier.
“The Male Coach of the Year nominees were Loyola Power for softball, and Chris Roberts, who won the Coach of the Year for swimming,” Hillier said. “The Female Coach of the Year winner was Allison Kirby and this is not the first time that Allison has won that award. We had a Youth Female Team of the Year finalist, which was the CBS Silhouettes Swim Club. And in the Senior Official of the Year (category), we had a finalist in Kiana Laundy for Taekwando. I just wanted to take a moment and congratulate all those people on the great job they’ve done representing, for some of them, our country, and certainly all of them our province and our town. Congratulations.”
According to the Sport NL’s background notes on the award winners, Roberts has been a coach for top swimmers for 12 years. Last year, his charges set 15 provincial records, with many of them representing the senior provincial team. He also coaches top swimmer Chris Weeks who won gold and silver medals at the Canadian Swimming Championships along with notching a varsity sports record in the 50-metre fly.
Kirby meanwhile, is the Head Coach of Cygnus Gymnastics whose athletes won seven medals at the 2024 Canadian National Championships. They also won 23 medals at the L’International Gymnix, 53 medals at the Atlantic Championships, and 14 medals at the Eastern Canadian Championships. Kirby has a Master’s degree in Sport and Exercise Psychology.
Amongst the nominees, Power skippered 3 Cheers Pub Miller Lite to first place finishes in the St. John’s Senior Men’s Fastpitch League and the Senior Men’s Fastpitch Provincial Championship. Nationally, Power guided the NL Murno Mariners to a gold medal at the Under-23 Men’s Canadian Fastpitch Championship.
The CBS Silhouettes ages 13-15 team won the provincial synchronized swimming championship in their category and took first place at the 2024 Atlantic Regional Championship.
As for Laundry, she officiated at a number of national tournaments and championships last year, grabbing honours as Best Female Referee at two of them. She is the province’s highest-certified active referee and is working towards becoming Newfoundland’s first international ref, all this while finishing her last year of a science degree in biochemistry at Memorial University in the hope of gaining entrance to medical school.
Sharing in Hillier’s congratulations to the nominees and winners, Mayor Darrin Bent said it seems like every year CBS is moving towards becoming the municipality with the most nominations at the Sport NL awards.