Spirit of Trent Award for Mike Davies
University honours Examiner sports director
The Examiner’s Mike Davies received the Spirit of Trent Award from his alma mater’s alumni association Saturday.
Davies accepted the award during the university’s annual homecoming and Head of the Trent regatta.
The Spirit of Trent award is given each year to an alumnus who “has made a difference, through contribution to the university, the alumni association or the community,” states a description on Trent’s alumni website. “We intend with this award to recognize those who continue to demonstrate the values and lessons learned at Trent.”
Davies began working for The Examiner in 1992, soon after graduating Trent with a joint degree in English and philosophy. After a period covering local news, including the courts, he moved over to sports and eventually took over the Petes and Lakers beats. He continues to cover the teams to this day, along with Trent and Fleming athletics, high school and minor sports and more.
In his role as the paper’s sports director, Davies not only writes the bulk of the paper’s sports coverage, he also co-ordinates the paper’s daily local sports pages, handles its columnists
and contributors, and serves as the paper’s representative in the sports community.
“He has been widely recognized for his journalistic contribution to sports across Ontario, being nominated for several prominent awards,” the citation states. Davies has won a Canadian Press certificate of merit, the Ontario Lacrosse Association Media Recognition Award, the Peterborough Petes Media Recognition Award (for covering 1,000 consecutive Petes games), the Ontario Newspaper Awards’ Robert Jay Hanley Award for Sports Writing and the Gymnastics Ontario Media Award. He was a finalist for the Western Ontario Newspaper Awards and the Ontario Minor Hockey Association Homegrown Hockey George H. Carver Memorial Media Award. As well, a bench will be named for him at the Riverview Park and Zoo.
He does all this without being able to see most of what he writes about.
As he outlined for readers in a 2012 column, Davies has retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary vision disease that has caused his sight to gradually worsen. While he first noticed it while attending Trent, his vision loss became more serious after he’d gone to work for the paper.
It hasn’t slowed him down, the awards committee noted.
“Amazingly, Mike has accomplished all of this while courageously battling the loss of his vision ... And THAT perseverance is a true hallmark of the Spirit of Trent,” the citation states.
Founding president Tom Symons was one of the people who nominated Davies.
“His courage, steadfastness, and determination in the face of this profound challenge of blindness is truly remarkable and has resulted in a remarkable record of achievement,” Symons wrote.
“It is a wonderful thing to encounter a newspaper sports editor who writes so clearly and well of athletic events and their important place in the life of our community — without being able to actually see them! I admire greatly Michael’s indomitable spirit. It is inspiration for us all and a high example of the spirit of Trent at its best.”