Kayla Blackmore of Women’s Hockey Receives AUS Student-Athlete and Community Service Award, Danielle Miller Named to Conference All-Rookie Team
Published: Friday, Mar 2, 2012
Kayla Blackmore’s exceptional skills on the ice, as well as her outstanding academic achievement and community involvement have made her this year’s Atlantic University Sport Women’s Hockey Student-Athlete Service Award Recipient.
The fourth-year centre from Fredericton, New Brunswick possesses tremendous speed, great hands, and hard shot. This helped her to first on her team in scoring and sixth in the conference, with 16 goals and 14 assists in 21 games.
Off the ice, she excels even more. Maintaining a dean’s list GPA, she has been named to St. Thomas University’s list of top 100 students. She has twice been nominated as St. Thomas’ representative for the Top 8 CIS Academic All-Canadians, as well as being the recipient of the 2010 James Bayer Memorial Award. She has been a CIS Academic All-Canadian for each of her previous three years at STU. In the spring of 2010, she was awarded the Dr. Tony Rhinelander Nature of History Prize for a commitment to the field of history and research.
An aspiring teacher, Blackmore has been heavily involved in coaching and mentoring young hockey players. She has had great success as an assistant coach with the New Brunswick under-15 and under-17 teams, as well as coaching 10-17 year-olds in the V-Red Prospects Spring Hockey program for three years. Blackmore has also volunteered several hockey clinics and camps around Fredericton and St. Thomas.
The is given to the player who best represents the balance between athletic achievement, academics and community service, with each of these components being weighted equally. This also automatically nominates Blackmore for the national equivalent, the Marion Hillard Award.
Miller Making an Immediate Impact
Danielle Miller, line-mate of Blackmore’s, was also named to the Atlantic University Sport Conference All-Rookie Team.
She put up eight goals and 13 assists in her first season with the Tommies. That made the Saskatoon native second on the team in scoring.
The 5’9” forward was exceptional for the Tommies this season. Averaging a point per game, she played her way on to the first power play unit and was one of the team’s top penalty killers. She proved herself early, able to handle and succeed in all the key situations coach Peter Murphy put her in game-in-and-game-out.