Last chance to register nominees for Kirkcaldy and Central Fife Sports Council Awards!

By this Sunday, January 12, members of the public must encourage clubs/coaches/committee members to submit nominations for awards in the junior; youth; senior; disability; coach; junior/youth team; team; service to sport and club categories, to be handed out during the upcoming ceremony at Fife College’s St Brycedale Campus in Kirkcaldy on Thursday, March 13.

Nominations can be made online at www.kcfsportscouncil.co.uk/annual-awards/ – but you’d better be quick!

This year’s overall sports personality winner will be following in the footsteps of an illustrious list of champions who have received the top prize over the years.

To jog your memories, Kirkcaldy and Central Fife Sports Council Awards sports personality of the year recipients in the first 14 stagings (honouring individuals’ achievements in the year preceding the ceremony) have been: 2008 Eleanor Clark (bowling); 2009 Sean Finney (boxing); 2010 Lois Divine (karate); 2011 Jamie Ford Junior (karate); 2012 Gordon Moodie (stock cars); 2013 Connor Law (boxing); 2014 Liz Anderson (football); 2015 Steven Ray (mixed martial arts); 2016 Mark Cuggy Snr (Muay Thai); 2017 Craig Easton (football); 2018 Connor Wood (rugby); 2019 Derek Rae (athletics); 2021-’22 Erin Taylor (swimming); 2023 Ruby McDonald (disability sport).

In a series of articles over the past few weeks, the Fife Free Press has spoken to former winners and several potential new champions this time around, with all speaking about just how much it would mean to them to be crowned as gong recipients in a couple of months.

The 2014 winner Anderson, whose East Fife Girls and Women’s FC side are currently top of the Barclay’s Scottish Women’s Championship, is so dedicated to her club that she recently came out of retirement to play as their goalkeeper, having previously been a centre-half!

And 2017 sports personality Easton, now a lecturer at Fife College, modestly said he was surprised to have been crowned ahead of the rest in spring 2018, despite the fact that he had just led Raith Rovers under-20s to consecutive SPFL Development League East titles in 2016-17 and 2017-18.

With a push towards recognising more people from minority sports at March’s awards night, we have also profiled Kirkcaldy-based professional dance teacher Danielle Law, who has previously travelled to Japan, Oman, New Zealand and Australia to perform highland dancing and currently coaches Cody Fong, who is ranked the world’s fourth best under-16 highland dancer.

Another dedicated local sports enthusiast is Dunnikier Cricket Club secretary Saqlain Haider, who revealed that he and a few other members are investing their own cash into the now 169-year-old club – which has been blighted by underinvestment, a lack of players and vandalism – just to keep it going.

And we discovered that Kirkcaldy Curling School – featuring long serving secretary Bill Creevy – is going strong as its impressive array of coaches works hard to bring on the next generation of players at local schools.