Sunday 27th April 2019 proved to be the perfect evening for celebrating the 2018 success of Cook Island athletes and officials. Leading up to the awards night CISNOC secretary general stated that there were more nominations for this year’s awards ceremony than there were for last years and that it’ll be a closely fought contest between athletes and federations. 

Over the past two years Cook Island sports award nights have been centred around bringing  the focus and celebration close to home. An effort in doing this was by selecting guest speakers who are Cook Islanders that have done well overseas or are currently living in the Cook Islands. This year those two speakers were Patricia Taea and Brett Baudinet, who both were winners of the top Cook Islands athlete award for sportsman and sportswoman of the year in 2018. Celebrating the success of these two high profiled Cook Islands based athletes strikes at the core of building the nations sporting talent. Their hard-work and dedication does not go unnoticed and we hope that others are inspired to do the same.

2018 was such a successful sporting year for the Cook Islands and the competition for the nominations were very tough. However, the results for all categories are listed below:

2018 Sports Technical Officer of the Year – John Pareanga

2018 Sports Administrator of the Year – Pauline Dean

2018 Sports Coach of the Year – Darren Piri

2018 Pa Enua Sports Association of the Year – Mangaia Sports Association

2018 Pa Enua Sports Achievement of the Year – Enuamanu School 7’s Team

2018 Sports Achievement of the Year – Lawn Bowls 

2018 Sports Team of the Year – Lawn Bowls

2018 Fair Play Award – Men’s Basketball 5×5

2018 IOC Sports Personality Award – Hugh Graham

2018 Women and Sports Trophy – Women’s Basketball 5×5

2018 Junior Sports Women of the Year – Jade Tierney

2018 Junior Sports Man of the Year – Bede Aitu

Services to Sport – Brian Baudinet

2018 Sportswoman of the Year – Kirsten Fisher-Marsters

2018 Sportsman of the Year – Taiki Paniani

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees for the 2018 Cook Islands Sports Awards. We cannot wait to celebrate 2019 sporting success.