Lakeland College Rustlers Jenay Varga, women’s volleyball, and Giordano Ciccacci, men’s soccer/futsal, were this year’s Female and Male Athletes of the Year. File Photo
The Lakeland College Rustlers wrapped another season by celebrating success with its largest athletic banquet to date.
The annual athletic banquet was held in the college’s cafeteria on March 29, and with over 200 athletes, coaches, and friends and family in attendance, additional seating had to be set up on the second-floor hallway above the caf.
“The banquet was about celebrating the successes of our athletes,” said Rustlers athletic director Alan Rogan.
“We talk about our three pillars, which are community, competition and classroom, and we talked about all of that at the event.
“It was by far our largest athletics banquet. I think part of that is because we’ve expanded and added a women’s hockey program, we’ve also had more assistant coaches with us this year than ever before.”
The Rustlers had quite a bit of success to celebrate after the women’s volleyball team won the ACAC and CCAA championships, the men’s futsal team won ACAC bronze, mixed curling won ACAC gold on home ice in Vermilion, the rowing team won silver and bronze in the Alberta Indoor Rowing Championship, and in their inaugural season in the ACAC, the women’s hockey team took home bronze.
Other highlights include the men’s basketball team finishing their season in fifth (their fourth top-5 finish in five years), and men’s volleyball finishing sixth after nearly finishing fifth (the program’s best finish in its history).
Jenay Varga, women’s volleyball, and Giordano Ciccacci, men’s soccer/futsal, were named Female and Male Athletes of the Year.
In the ACAC, Varga was named Athlete of the Year across all sports, made the North Division All-Conference Team, and was named Player of the Year. She also had the ACAC’s most kills per set, overall kills, service aces per set, and the third-overall hitting percentage.
In the CCAA, Varga was named an Academic All-Canadian as well as an All-Canadian Selection.
“Jenay Varga won pretty much every award, provincially and nationally, that she could have won,” said Rogan. “She had an incredible season.”
Ciccacci also had a phenomenal season and was named the men’s soccer MVP and an All-Star at the ACAC Futsal Championship where the team won bronze.
The women’s hockey team’s Hailey Carothers also had a great year and won the ACAC’s Rookie of the Year and Player of the Year. She was also named 1st Team All-Conference as well as Rookie of the Year across all sports.
Coach of the women’s volleyball team, Austin Dyer, also finished his season on a high note after winning Coach of the Year, not only in the ACAC but in all of Canada.
Among the long list of awards was the Rustler Award, which Rogan explained embodies what being a Rustler is all about.
“If you could go out and recruit the student-athlete that embodies everything … it’s not your best student-athlete physically, it’s ‘are you a leader, are you contributing to the team, are you one of our athletes who’s a strong athlete but also a leader?’” he said.
“It’s that holistic Rustler we look for and we hope all our athletes have. Talk to our coaches and they’ll say selecting that person is so difficult because we have so many quality people in our program.”
This year’s Rustler Award recipients included MacKena Foisy, women’s hockey, Jarrett Nelson, men’s volleyball, Anika Timmerman, women’s basketball, Michael Shelast, men’s basketball, Amber MacLean, women’s soccer/futsal, Makaila Peutert, curling, Gavin Quinlan, men’s soccer/futsal, Kaylie Lueck, women’s volleyball and Brie Corley, Allecia McDonald, Anissa Halbert, Tiara Pihrag, curling.
The night wasn’t only about athletic achievements, however, as Rogan explained awards were given out for the highest GPA, community involvement, as well as the competitive successes of the college’s many programs.
“We’ll know more here closer to the middle or end of May, but we’ll probably have the highest number of national scholar award winners we’ve ever had at Lakeland,” said Rogan.
“The kids are getting it done in competition, the kids are getting it done in the classroom, the kids are getting it done in the community, and those are our three pillars we stood behind from the very beginning. We stayed true to those pillars and it’s actually starting to show now.”
Rogan explained the overall GPA of Lakeland student-athletes has increased from 2.5 more than a decade ago, to 3.0 this year.
For Rogan, he knows what it takes from all parties to build and maintain a successful athletic program, and he’s very happy to see the fruits of everyone’s labour paying off.
“What I’m most proud of is the fact we’re not ‘one of.’ We didn’t win a national women’s volleyball title which we probably won’t do again for another few years, we won a national title, we won a bunch of other medals, and we’re consistently being successful in competition,” he said.
“We’re consistently having a high collective GPA, we’re consistently involved in the communities we live and work in, and that’s probably the proudest moment for me; we’re being consistent in our successes.”
