Outstanding season earns due recognition

BY JOHN DECOSTE

jdecoste@kentvilleadvertiser.ca

NovaNewsNow.com

Valley Minor Football was rewarded for an outstanding 2007 season with several awards at the Football Nova Scotia annual awards reception Jan. 26 in Halifax.

Steve Melanson, head coach of the provincial runner-up Valley peewee Bulldogs, received the Doug Quackenbush Memorial Award as FNS Coach of the Year.

Melanson, a Coldbrook resident, was cited as “an elite manager and developer of talent with his team” for his work in leading the peewee Bulldogs to the most successful season in their history and a spot in the provincial final.

“I’m very pleased,” Melanson said Wednesday, who took over the peewee Bulldogs this past season after a couple of years as an assistant. “It rewards the kids for the great season they had and it makes all the hard work worthwhile.”

Extra special

The Coach of the Year award was extra special for Melanson “because it’s named after Doug Quackenbush, who was my high school football coach at Dartmouth High. He’s the one who first got me interested in playing football and a big reason I’m a coach today.”

Instead of overall MVP awards, offensive and defensive MVPs and Fair Play awards were presented for each team in the mite, atom, peewee and bantam divisions as well as women’s, varsity (U-20), senior men’s and flag football.

Valley winners of offensive MVP awards were Cameron Davidson for the atom Bulldogs, Will Stewart for the peewees and Roland Provencal for the bantams.

Defensive MVP awards were presented to Jacob Melanson for the atoms, Adam Melanson for the peewees and Brett Hines of the bantams.

Michael Ogilvie from the atom Bulldogs, Robert Adams from the peewees and Nick Bawn from the bantams were all recipients of Larry Uteck Memorial Fair Play Awards in recognition of their hard work, dedication and commitment to ethics in their sport.

The Uteck awards were presented by Larry Uteck’s widow, HRM councillor Sue Uteck.

Halifax native Adrian Saturley, an Acadia student and member of the football Axemen during the AUFC season, was the winner of the Defensive MVP award for his team, the Mainland Redhawks, in the U-20 Varsity Football League.