Draycote Water Sailing Club members highly praised at Rugby Sports Awards 2023
by Jeremy Atkins 17 Apr 10:45 BST
12 April 2024
Jess Powell wins the Rugby Young Sportsperson Award © Jamie Gray / Rugby Borough Council
The Royal Yachting Association has long been encouraging sailing clubs to diversify their offering and it is perhaps not surprising that the current RYA Club of the Year, Draycote Water Sailing Club, has been praised in this regard.
But while many sailing clubs have diversified into other watersports, like SUP, DWSC would appear to have taken it one stage further if their success at last week's Rugby Sports Awards is anything to go by. [Rugby, as in the Warwickshire town.]
These annual awards have a number of categories and one of the most prestigious is the ten Rugby Excellence in Sport Awards - open to young people aged 18 or under who represent the sport at a national or international level. For 2023 an amazing five of these awards were won by members of DWSC - massively outperforming any other club. The winners were Ben Angell (scrum half), Freddie Sunderland (fly half), Kat Gunn (centre), Jess Powell (wing) and Lola Huett (artistic swimming).
Jess Powell also was awarded the Rugby Young Sportsperson of the Year Award, to go alongside her recent YJA Young Sailor of the Year Award. Sadly Jess was not able to attend the evening as she was competing in the ILCA 4 European Championships in Slovenia.
This led to the rather unfortunate situation of her award being presented by the awards' special guest Ruqsana Begum (seriously, check her out - her talk was inspiring and would have made the evening worthwhile without winning any awards) to DWSC President, Jeremy Atkins, who could not be described as young and possibly not a sportsperson either.
Draycote Academy Head Coach, Steve Irish, was short-listed for Coach of the Year for the third year but again failed to take home the trophy. Perhaps he should change code to League where his boatspeed advice may be considered more useful.
Draycote Water Sailing Club was also shortlisted for Rugby Club of the Year but sadly did not win the trophy to go alongside their Sailing Club of the Year trophy on the club bar.
Nevertheless, it was a great and successful evening for the club held, of course, in the Borough of Rugby.