File photo: Priscilla Lopes-Schliep of Canada (C) leaps a hurdle on her way to winning the Women's 60 Meter Hurdles at the 103rd Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden in New York, January 29, 2010. Canada's Perdita Felicien is at right and Virginia Powell of the U.S. is at left. REUTERS/Mike SegarMIKE SEGAR/Reuters
Olympic bronze medal hurdler Priscilla Lopes-Schliep and her home coach Anthony McCleary topped the Ontario Sports Awards podium as the 2009 honours were distributed at Ontario Place Thursday night.
Lopes-Schliep, who will take aim on women's Canadian hurdling record this summer, won silver at the 2009 world championships in Berlin, set a personal best of 12.49 seconds for the 100-metre hurdles in 2009 and took bronze at the 2010 indoor worlds in Doha.
Figure skater Patrick Chan, second in the 2009 and 2010 worlds and fifth in the Vancouver Olympics after a personal best in the long program, was named top Ontario male athlete for 2009.
Curling's Wendy Morgan was voted top female coach. Wheelchair rugby player Erika Schmutz and powerlifter Stephen Jesso were top female and male athletes with a disability and the 22-member Nexxice synchronize skating squad was voted top team.
It has been big week on a variety of stages for Ontario athletes. On Wednesday, the Queen's Baton from the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, went through Toronto on its way to Ottawa, and was passed along though the hands of Canadian medalists from James Worrall (1934), to Bruce Kidd (1962), to Alexanda Orlando (2006).
Lopes-Schliep grew up and trained as a youngster in Whitby, Ont., then went to university in Nebraska and married and settled there. She won out Thursday night over fellow nominees with outstanding credentials: Jennifer Kirby, who at 18 won golf's Ontario and national junior titles, the Ontario and national women's amateur crowns; and waterskier Whitney McClintock, who won four golds at the world championships to lead the Canadian team to a world title.
Lopes-Schliep was also voted best track athlete in Canada for 2009 and ranked third in the world by Track and Field News. This season, she said, she will try to lower the Canadian women's record of 12.46 seconds for the 100-metre hurdles held by Perdita Felicien, the 2007 Ontario award winner.
She has been coached by McCleary since she was 16 at the Elite Edge Club and was persuaded by her to switch to hurdles from flat sprints. McCleary was also Athletics Canada's coach of the year in 2009.
Chan, who skates out of Toronto's Granite Club, repeated as Canadian champ in 2009, then won the Four Continents gold before taking silver at the world. He came back from calf injuries late in 2009 to qualify for the Vancouver Olympics. He outpolled golfer Matt Hill, who at North Carolina State captured eight NCAA titles and won the Jack Nicklaus Award, and national team freestyle swim star Colin Russell, who broke national records at 100 and 200 metrews.
Morgan, a coach for two decades, coached Canadian wheelchair teams to five medals in the 2009 season, including golds at the wheelchair world championships in Vancouver.
Schmutz, injured in a car accident in 2000, is one of the few women to qualify for a men's international wheelchair rugby team and last year led her side to six international medals, two of them gold.
Jesso broke powerlifting world records for the blind in 2009 and has a goal of becoming the first lifter with a disability to get a medal at the world championship for able-bodied athletes. Jesso was born with sight in only one eye and lost most of the sight in his good eye in an accident while playing basketball.