St. Catharines hands out hardware
Some in St. Catharines might have heard of him before he left for Egypt last summer, but a week later the entire basketball community across the country of Canada, and in fact the world, knew the name — Abu Kigab.
Kigab was named a tournament all-star as Canada captured gold for the first time ever at the FIBA Under-19 World Cup, and for that Kigab was named 2017 St. Catharines Athlete of the Year in an award’s ceremony Monday night at city hall.
“Very disappointed that I couldn’t be there tonight,” said Kigab, who recorded a video message upon learning of receiving the award. “I’m very honoured to be selected as male athlete of the year.
“It’s something that I thought I would have never gotten growing up because of where I came from and how I had it when I was growing up.
“This is truly a dream come true, and I really appreciate everybody who supported me through my journey. I want to give a big thank you to everybody — appreciate you.”
The now 19-year old Kigab, who moved to Canada at the age of nine from Sudan and who is now away playing college basketball at the University of Oregon after receiving numerous scholarship offers from a number of top NCAA Division-1 schools, went to Queen Mary elementary school before beginning his high school basketball career at St. Francis Secondary in St. Catharines.
After playing at St. Francis, Kigab headed south to a prep school in California before joining the Canadian U-19 men’s national team.
The 6-foot-6 forward averaged 14.7 points, 10.6 rebounds and 2.3 assists at the 2017 FIBA World Cup last July as Canada upset the Americans in the semifinals before topping Italy in the gold medal game.
Bernd Franke, regional sports editor of the three Niagara daily newspapers, presented the athlete of the year award to Abu’s mother, Mashair El Gaide, who was accepting on his behalf.
And while Kigab took home the honour of athlete of the year Monday night, a pair of builders in the sport of curling earned the honour of being named sportspersons of the year.
Doug Geddie and Keith Shaver were both instrumental in bringing the 2017 Canadian Women’s Curling Championships to St. Catharines and Meridian Centre.
Also known as the Scott Tournament of Hearts, or Scotties, the tournament was broadcast live all week across the country on TSN drawing millions of viewers, including 2.5 million sets of eyes for the final.
Both Geddie and Shaver acknowledged that starting small, and at the grassroots level, was the key to landing the Scotties for St. Catharines.
“We’re very humbled,” said Geddie. “We don’t get involved in these things for the recognition, but it’s really nice to see the city in particular have the awareness of all the effort that goes into (hosting) and national championship.
“We started small. We did some local bonspiels, then it was a provincial, then it was a national but it’s been a building process”.
Over 60,000 tickets were sold for the Scotties at Meridian Centre last February, equalling close to $800,000 in revenue.
The Scott Tournament of Hearts cemented St. Catharines and Meridian Centre as a premier sporting destination across the country.
“Being awarded the Scotties I recall walking up the ice during the opening ceremonies and being overwhelmed by the number of spectators — there was 5,000 people in the seats watching the event,” added Shaver.
“The flag-bearers, the officials, the teams proudly displaying their (provincial) flags on their jackets, and all of this came to fruition because the city had the foresight to put together the Meridian Centre and support our bid to host the Scotties.
“There was hundreds of volunteers that made this happen, and on behalf of Doug and myself I would like to thank each and every one of them.”
Both Shaver and Geddie are behind the bid to bring the 2020 Brier (Canadian National Men’s Curling Championship) to St. Catharines and the Meridian Centre.