Rowers scoop top SC awards
World championship winning rower Emma Dyke is the 2020 South Canterbury sportsperson of the year.
The former student at Craighead Diocesan School in Timaru was announced as the winner last night, the final night of three online events marking the South Canterbury Sports Awards.
The 24-year-old Dyke, a 2019 Prime Minister Scholarship recipient and member of the New Zealand women’s rowing eight that won the World Cup in Austria, started her rowing career with Craighead Diocesan and the Timaru Rowing Club in 2010.
As world champions, the women’s eight was nominated for the Halberg Awards Team of the Year category, and Dyke also won a national title in the women’s pair and was runner-up in the women’s four in 2019.
Dyke, who first represented New Zealand at the 2013 world junior event in the women’s coxless four, now rows in the No 2 seat of the eights, the most successful women’s eights this country has had with wins at World Rowing Cup III and Henley as well as the world championships.
Dyke’s win completed a great rowing double for Craighead Diocesan’s rowing programme as Phoebe Trolove took out the young sportsperson of the year title for the second straight year.
Trolove, who hails from Marlborough, but was at Craighead from year nine until the end of 2019, was stroke in the New Zealand junior women’s quad that won gold at the junior world championships in Tokyo.
Dyke and Trolove also won $1000 from the Aoraki Sportspersons Charitable Trust.
Another two world champions, Geraldine’s Allan Oldfield and Fairlie’s Tony Dobbs, were named team of the year for their world championship win in blade shearing at the 2019 World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships in France.
The winners, usually announced at an awards ceremony in May, were announced on social media via livestreaming over three nights. The full list of winners is:
Administrator of the Year, Jen Moorhead (squash).
Official of the Year, Vanessa McIver (rowing).
Coach of the Year, Ben Grant (hockey).
Sport and Recreation Event of the Year, New Zealand Secondary Schools Cross Country Championships.
Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability, Graham Marshall (lawn bowls).
Masters Sportsperson of the Year, Craig Domigan (cycling).
Lifetime Achievement Awards, Bruce Skinner (basketball); Darren Cuthbertson (cycling), Dean Nelson (multi-sport).
Team of the Year, New Zealand Blade Shearing Team (Allan Oldfield and Tony Dobbs).
Young Sportsperson of the Year, Phoebe Trolove (rowing).
Sportsperson of the Year, Emma Dyke (rowing).