By Earl Zukerman
Hockey players Alexandre Picard-Hooper and Cathy Chartrand were named McGill male and female athletes of the year, respectively, at the 34th annual McGill intercollegiate sports awards gala held at the Love Competition Hall, inside the Currie Gym, last Thursday.
Picard-Hooper, a finance junior, and Chartrand, an education senior, received the Stuart Forbes and Gladys Bean trophies as the student-athletes who brought the most credit to the University by reason of their athletic achievements. Both were also announced as their respective Team MVPs.
Chartrand, the Martlets team captain, also captured the Muriel V. Roscoe trophy, awarded to a graduating female athlete for proficiency and leadership. She becomes the fifth person to repeat as McGill female athlete of the year and is the first person to win both the Bean and Roscoe trophies.
Chartrand was the top-scoring defenceman in the country for the second year in a row, registering eight goals and 29 points in 20 regular season games and earning Canadian Intercollegiate Sports (CIS) all-Canadian status. In 43 games over all, she tallied 15 goals and 49 points. She capped her campaign off by receiving all-tournament honours at the CIS championship for the fourth consecutive year. It marks the sixth time – and fifth consecutive season – that a hockey player has received the Bean trophy since its inception in 1992.
Picard-Hooper cleans up
It was an award-filled campaign for Picard-Hooper, a 5-foot-11, 185-pound forward, who became the 16th hockey player since 1948 to win the Forbes trophy. He became the first McGill player to win the CIS scoring title since current Montreal Canadiens winger Mathieu Darche in 1999-00. He also merited CIS All-Canadian honours and was named OUA East conference MVP. In addition, he received the Bill L’Heureux and Senator Joseph A. Sullivan trophies as OUA and CIS players of the year. Picard-Hooper registered the second-best season ever by a member of the Redmen, with 91 points in 46 games overall, including a single-season school record 68 assists.
Hockey Martlets best team
The hockey Martlets, guided by head coach Peter Smith, earned the Martlet Foundation trophy as the varsity team of the year for the fifth consecutive year. They posted a perfect 20-0 record in the Quebec league and went 33-0 against Canadian university opponents, en route to capturing the CIS national championship for the third time in four years. Overall, the Martlets posted a 36-5-2 mark, including games against NCAA schools and a boys midget team. They were ranked No.1 the entire season.
Senior Guillaume Doucet, an alternate captain with the hockey Redmen received the Richard Pound trophy for proficiency and leadership by a male athlete. Sarah McCuaig, an all-Canadian distance runner from Waterloo, Ont., was awarded the Uldis Auders memorial trophy as the top sophomore in any sport, who best combines academics with athletics. She was also named as MVP of both the cross-country and track teams. Basketball’s Simon Bibeau and hockey’s Katia Clément-Heydra were announced as the male and female freshmen of the year.
André Corbeil, a reporter from CTV Montreal, took home the McGill-Concordia Media Award for his dedicated coverage of university sports in Montreal.
Administrators at McGill Athletics and Recreation also paid tribute to 88 league all-stars, 16 CIS all-Canadians, four conference championships and the three national titles (baseball, women’s hockey, synchro swimming) won during the 2010-11 intercollegiate season, and presented commemorative plaques to the MVPs of 28 varsity teams.