Sporting stars grab top awards

The Hastings & Rother area featured prominently among the winners at the prestigious Sussex Sports Awards.
Battle shooter Steve Scott (left) receives his award at The Grand Hotel last Friday night. Picture courtesy Southern News & Pictures (SNAP)Battle shooter Steve Scott (left) receives his award at The Grand Hotel last Friday night. Picture courtesy Southern News & Pictures (SNAP)
Battle shooter Steve Scott (left) receives his award at The Grand Hotel last Friday night. Picture courtesy Southern News & Pictures (SNAP)

Steve Scott was the winner of the Freedom Leisure Sports Personality of the Year Award at The Grand Hotel in Brighton last Friday night.

Battle-based shooter Scott has enjoyed an outstanding year in the double trap discipline, winning medals at no less than three major international competitions.

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The 29-year-old won gold representing England at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow shortly after triumphing at the European Championships in Hungary, where he got the better of the world number one.

Scott, who is number one in the British rankings, then won a bronze medal at the 2014 ISSF World Shooting Championships in Spain during September.

Rising Hastings badminton star Lydia Powell won the University of Chichester Young Sports Personality of the Year Award.

The 18-year-old former Parkwood 6th Form student has enjoyed a very good year, which has included playing for England at the BWF World Junior Championships 2014 in Malaysia.

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Already ranked in the national top 20 for women’s singles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles, Powell has set herself the long-term target of being the UK’s number one senior and making the world’s top five.

Alison Larkin, head of PE at St Mary’s School in Bexhill, won the Sport England Outstanding Contribution to Sport Award.

She has been teaching PE in the special needs sector for over 35 years and has been head of PE at St Mary’s Special School in Bexhill for more than three decades.

During that time, the school won the Cricket Foundations Chance to Shine Award in 2010 and Alison got children at a basic level into the county squad for the first time.

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For many years Alison has been in charge of the Mike Thornton Games, a disability athletics event for schools across Sussex.

Bexhill Swimming Club’s disability team clinched the Team of the Year Award. The team has spent the last year working hard at its training, and putting in stunning performances in swimming galas at local, regional, national and international levels in Special Olympics (St Albans, London, Reading, Cardiff, Peterborough and Los Angeles), Disability (Bognor and Burgess Hill) and Masters (London, Eastbourne and Horsham) events.

Three swimmers, Kirsty Stewart, Tristan Curtis and Daniel Sherlock, have taken part in 10 events in the last year, and won a total of 25 gold, 18 silver and 14 bronze medals.

Organised by Active Sussex, the event welcomed back regular host, BBC Sussex DJ Danny Pike, who was joined by special guest, former swimmer Mark Foster.

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