Following an exceptional high jumping season, Trinity Western Spartans track and field star Emma Nuttall was presented with the Eric Liddell Award.
She received the award at the 2013 Edinburgh Sports Awards earlier this month.
The award is presented to “an athlete who has excelled in athletics, shown dedication to training and has the potential to be a world class athlete of the future.”
Liddell was a Scottish athlete who won the men’s 400m in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. His story was the inspiration for the Oscar-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire.
A judging panel made up of members of the Lothian Athletics Partnership chose the winner from the nominees.
“I feel very privileged to have been nominated for and to have won the Eric Liddell award,” Nuttall said.
“It is a great honour to have been recognized as an athlete by my local community back in Scotland. I hope this award is a precursor to a strong international career as a high jumper.
“Eric Liddell is an idol for many in the world of track and field, especially in Scotland and to be given an award that bears his name is very exciting and I hope that I can prove myself worthy of this award in the years to come.”
The award comes in the wake of a 2013 season in which Nuttall captured both a Canada West gold medal, with a conference record jump of 1.85m, which also garnered her the award for the outstanding female performance of the meet, and a CIS silver medal.
During the outdoor season, Nuttall also won nabbed a gold medal at the British championships, clearing a personal best 1.87m, which marked the third highest jump ever achieved in Scottish history.
And on Wednesday (Sept. 25), Nuttall was named to Scotland’s Commonwealth Games team.
She will compete on home soil as Scotland hosts the event in Glasgow July 23 to Aug. 3.
“I am so incredibly happy to be selected,” Nuttall said.
“This will be my first senior international competition and it is an honour to be part of this first selection. I have a lot of hard work to do over the winter in order to perform well in front of the home crowd but I cannot wait. Scottish crowds are amazing in their support, so I’m thrilled to be competing in front of a home crowd. This selection just gives me even more motivation to work hard in order to make my goals a reality.”
“I think fundamentally, we’ve always talked about putting kids on provincial and national teams and we made that a priority for us, knowing that, if we have that level of athlete, we’re going to do well in the CIS,” said Spartans coach Laurier Primeau. “I think this is evidence of the fact that we are pushing our standards continually higher. I am ecstatic for Emma.”
