Joey Payeur
There were two common themes running through the winners of the four major honours at the annual Muskie athletic awards ceremony Thursday afternoon.
The quartet of elite talents who walked onto the Townshend Theatre stage to accept their respective trophies all had their interscholastic sports beginnings rooted at St. Francis School here as members of the various Sentinels’ teams.
But at least three of them also have a compelling comeback story.
For Muskie female athlete of the year Claire Hyatt, it was more like three comebacks.
After having not won any awards last year, Hyatt returned for her Grade 12 year and wound up being the captain and MVP for the Muskie senior girls’ basketball and volleyball squads, as well as the soccer team.
“It was a huge surprise to me,” conceded the starting shooting guard, setter, and midfielder about her sizable trophy haul.
“I hope that I don’t plateau when it comes to athletics and can just keep climbing,” she added.
The Muskies lost in the NorWOSSA finals of both senior girls’ basketball and volleyball to the Dryden Eagles in heart-wrenching fashion.
Dryden dashed Fort High’s bid for a “three-peat”—and also snapped the Muskies’ 28-game winning streak on home court—in the hoops final.
Then the Eagles fought back from a two-set deficit to preserve what’s now a 15-year championship dynasty in volleyball.
“I was crushed after the basketball final . . . I felt like crying for a month,” Hyatt admitted.
“As for volleyball, that sucked because we had the first two sets,” she noted.
So when the girls’ soccer season rolled around, Hyatt had just one thought in mind entering her final push for a NorWOSSA crown.
“When it was time for soccer, there was no way [Dryden] was beating us,” she vowed.
“We were going to crush them this time.”
The result was a 6-0 regular-season record and then a 1-0 triumph on the Eagles’ own turf in the league final.
“It was a close game and pretty stressful,” Hyatt recalled.
“I think there was one tear at the end for me . . . I was proud that I finally [got gold].”
Hyatt couldn’t pinpoint one specific memory she’ll take with her as she moves on in her educational and athletic life.
“Everything was amazing about being in Muskie sports,” she remarked.
“Being an athlete her moulded me . . . Erin [Tomalty] and I wouldn’t have probably hung out without being on the same team and now we’re best friends.”
Ian Jodoin, meanwhile, earned the Muskie male athlete-of-the-year award one year after not even making the senior boys’ volleyball team.
“Grade 11 volleyball caught me off guard, as it did lots of people, but there was no way that I was not going to come back this year,” stressed Jodoin, who also was named the boys’ soccer MVP and was a starting guard for the senior boys’ basketball squad.
As well, Jodoin joined Hyatt and Ashley Croswell in receiving letterman awards for having played on 10 different teams during their Muskie careers.
“Volleyball was really great, especially winning NorWOSSA [first time for the team since 1999],” he said.
“[But] the season for every sport was amazing.
“This is a huge award to receive and means a lot to me personally,” Jodoin added. “I take a lot of pride in athletics.”
Jodoin called being a Muskie athlete “the best time ever.”
“I’ve really developed as a person and especially being a leader for multiple teams has been a blessing,” he noted.
In the case of Muskie female rookie-of-the-year Adyson Wilson-Hands, also named junior girls’ volleyball MVP, her accolades were the end point of a long road back from a broken femur suffered two years ago while playing for the Fort
Frances Jr. Wolverines football team.
“Since Grade 7, I was hoping to be the rookie-of-the-year someday,” she recounted.
“There was some good competition this year and I didn’t think I would get it.”
While recovering from her gridiron injury, Wilson-Hands leaned on the words of former Canadian women’s volleyball team member Janie Guimond, whom she had met a few months before getting injured.
“Janie told me to keep training hard and have lots of perseverance, and good things would happen,” she recalled.
“She gave me the motivation to keep going.”
As for Austin Armstrong, the highlight of his Muskie male rookie-of-the-year campaign was pounding home the winning point in the NorWOSSA junior boys’ final against the Kenora Broncos for Fort High’s first gold since 2010.
“Winning this was the furthest thing from my mind when I started the year,” Armstrong said.
“My coaches and teammates really helped me through some tough times, and helped me improve as a player both on and off the fields and courts,” he noted.
All four athletes tipped their caps to their St. Francis background as providing a solid foundation for their success.
“I give tons of credit to St. Francis,” said Jodoin.
“It’s always been awesome for sports there . . . it gave us the skills to play high school sports,” he added.
