By Tim Channon, Sports Editor

ONE of the highlights of the year for the me as Weekly News Sports Editor is the Conwy Borough Sports Awards, which the Weekly News have sponsored enthusiastically for the past nine years.
And once again feed-back from this year's glittering presentation night, held recently at Venue Cymru in Llandudno, shows what a popular event this has become.

It is a chance to reward the achievements and dedication shown by the sports men and women in Conwy who have performed with distinction all over the world during 2006, capturing more than a dozen world titles - an outstanding achievement for the borough - and the Weekly News has always rated the Sports Awards as one of the most important projects in the community.
At a time when the youth of the area are continually tarnished by the actions of the vandals and hooligan element, it is nice to recognise the hard work and dedication that so many youngsters put into sport to achieve success at the highest level.
And also to highlight the work of volunteer coaches like Sue Parry of Abergele Swimming Club put into helping youngsters achieve those success. Sue gets up at 5am in the morning to coach youngsters at the local swimming pool and puts in another stint in the evening with a full day's work in between. Her swimmers gained over 70 medal successes during 2006 with her son Robert a double British Age Group National champion.
The Weekly News sports pages attempt to highlight as many sporting successes as possible, with our pages featuring between 18 and 20 different sports every week, plus a special page on junior sport.
Our imput into the Sports Awards evening is considerable and over 400 invited guests attended this year's ceremony at which former World 4 x 400 relay gold medalist Derek Redmond was the guest celebrity. The guests enjoyed a free buffet and were entertained by the very talented Conwy Youth Big Band, made up from youngsters from schools around the borough who were again absolutely superb.
A number of comments in questionnaires that have been returned since the event, praised the band and their music and felt they added tremendously to the atmosphere on the evening and everyone said they found the evening very enjoyable.
Derek Redmond, who is now a sprint and hurdles development officer for UK Athletics, and spoke very well before announcing the award winners, was full of praise for the event. I had an opportunity to chat to him at the Deganwy Quay Hotel where he was staying and there is a chance to read a hard-hitting interview with him elsewhere on this website.
Organising the Sports Awards takes a lot of hard work by the dedicated team that make up the Sports Awards committee, headed by Jim Jones of the Conwy Borough Council's Leisure department, and the selection panel, - of which I am one, have a tough task choosing the winners from what is often a high quality nomination list.
Sadly not all the deserving candidates send in nominations forms providing full details of their achievements and so can't be considered. That is a shame because they miss out on a great night of celebration and I hope in future even more people make the effort to put their names forward.
Discussions at the selection meeting can go on for many hours and the decision to name a winner can often come down to just one deciding vote.
But we always like to think that all the finalists are winners in their own right - they all deserve to stand up and take a bow, and long may it continue.

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