BANFF – These Banff Bears were absolute beasts in their respective sports and were recently rewarded for their leadership and aptitude this season.
Kyle Labiano and Hannah Macnaughton received Banff Community High School Bears’ 2018-19 senior athletes of the year awards on Tuesday (June 18).
The junior athletes of the year were Christian Cabasang and Sele Odagiri.
Winners of the Allen Tollestrup, BCHS’ most prestigious award that honours excellence in athletics, academics and leadership, was awarded to Teppei Ogawa and Carleigh Gorrigsen.
Macnaughton, or “Mac Daddy” as cheered by peers during the awards ceremony, played a major role on the basketball, volleyball and rugby teams this season, bringing a veteran voice to calm nerves or set up plays on the pitch or court.
“I think I tend to be pretty vocal on every team I play, so I think that helped me in receiving this award,” she said. “I’m a leader on the field and court, whatever I’m doing, I put my head down and work hard at it.”
She added she was honoured and surprised to have received the athlete of the year award because of all the deserving candidates at BCHS.
Macnaughton and the girls rugby team had success this season, going undefeated in the regular season before becoming back-to-back champions at zones for the first time in school history. The Bears attempted to win its first-ever provincial medal earlier in June, but ultimately finished fourth.
“Obviously any last game of the season is big, but those stand outs for me,” Macnaughton said, who was a team captain.
Macnaughton also won the rugby’s senior forward of the year, and earlier in the year, she was awarded the sportsmanship award for the senior girls basketball team.
Labiano, the MVP guard of the senior boys basketball team, dropped a mammoth 42 points in the final game of the season, where the Bears defeated the Oilfields Drillers, 95-71, to place seventh at 2A zones.
Labiano played volleyball and won senior back of the year for boys rugby, but said lighting up the scoreboard for 42 was his top memory in his final year as a Bear.
“Being a part of a team like rugby or basketball, it’s just really awesome,” he said. “Being friends with them, you get really close to everyone if you join sports.”
After some initial surprise he’d won, he said working hard and playing with passion in every sport aided his case for senior male athlete of the year.
“There are a lot of talented kids in our school, everyone deserved to get this award, I just don’t know how I got it, honestly,” he said.
