Saskatchewan men honoured with national sports awards

A Saskatchewan teenage hockey player and his coach have been honoured for their performances in 2009.

                                                                                                                                                                             Todd Fiddler, a 16-year-old from Meadow Lake, was chosen as a regional (Saskatchewan) winner of a Tom Longboat Award. He was deemed to be the top Aboriginal amateur male athlete in the province.

By winning this award, which was announced by the Aboriginal Sport Circle in late May, Fiddler, who starred with the Beardy’s Blackhawks midget AAA this past season, was also eligible to win a national Tom Longboat Award. 

                                                                                                                                                            But the national winner was Ammon Crowfoot, a high school basketball player and cross-country running star from Alberta.

A Saskatchewan resident though, Courage Bear, did win a national award. Bear was chosen as the male recipient for the National Aboriginal Coaching Award. Bear was the manager/coach for the Saskatchewan boys’ squad that captured the gold medal at the 2009 National Aboriginal Hockey Championship (NACH) staged in Winnipeg. Fiddler, whose mother Evelyn is Cree, was a member of that winning Saskatchewan side.

Bear was actually part of two medal winning clubs at the ’09 NAHC. He was the manager of the Saskatchewan girls’ entry that captured the bronze medal.

Though he was pretty happy to win his regional award, Fiddler, a Grade 11 student at Meadow Lake’s Carpenter High School, admitted he doesn’t know much about Tom Longboat, the legendary Aboriginal long-distance runner. The Ontario-born runner was one of the world’s fastest runners in the early 1900s. One of his career highlights was winning the 1907 Boston Marathon.

“It’s right up there,” Fiddler said of the importance of his most recent accolade compared to other awards he’s won. “It’s quite an honour. I didn’t think I’d win it.”

Fiddler, a 5-foot-10, 190-pound left winger, also added some other prestigious pieces of hardware to his trophy case this past season. Suiting up for his Beardy’s team, Fiddler led all scorers in the 12-team Saskatchewan midget AAA league by compiling 93 points (44 goals, 49 assists) in 40 regular season games. Besides winning the league’s top scorer award, Fiddler was also selected as the top forward in the loop. And he topped it off by being named as the league’s most valuable player as well.

As for this coming season, Fiddler, who turns 17 on July 13, is hoping he can crack the roster of the Medicine Hat Tigers of the Western Hockey League (WHL). The Tigers had selected him in the third round of the 2008 WHL bantam draft. Fiddler, who attended the Tigers’ training camps in each of the past two years, is hoping he can stick with the club this coming season.

“There’s a good chance (I’ll make the team),” he said.
Fiddler had a brief taste of life in the WHL this past season. He was called up and played one game with Medicine Hat. Fiddler also got a taste of some other junior action as well.

After his season with the Blackhawks concluded, he joined the La Ronge Ice Wolves of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, a Junior A loop considered a step below the WHL. Fiddler played four post-season games, earning one assist, with the Ice Wolves, who went on to capture the SJHL playoff title. Should he fail to make the Medicine Hat team this coming season, Fiddler said he’d in all likelihood join the La Ronge club.

As for Bear, a 33-year-old Cree who lives in Saskatoon, he also coached a pair of other youth hockey teams - at the pre-novice and midget levels - this past year. “It’s an honour,” he said of his national coaching award. “But I didn’t sign up to coach 15 years ago to win any awards. It was just to give back.”

Meanwhile, there were no female regional winners from Saskatchewan this year in either the athlete or coaching categories. The female national recipient of the Tom Longboat Award was Jessica Lilly, a 16-year-old triathlete from Alberta. And Gloria Hendrick-Laliberte, who lives in Thunder Bay, Ont., was chosen as the female National Aboriginal Coaching Award winner. She was honoured for her numerous years of coaching hockey, soccer, baseball and track and field teams in her hometown.