Highest number of Blues Awardees ever at the annual TeamMONASH ceremony

Monash University’s highest achieving athletes and coaches gathered at Caulfield on Friday for the 56th Annual Blues Award ceremony.

The sit-down meal is held annually, and this year recognised the outstanding performance of 106 athletes at a National and International level.

Attendees included athletes from a broad range of sports; Touch Football, Netball, Badminton, Swimming, Kendo, Table Tennis, Dodgeball, Golf, Athletics, Cheer and Dance, Sailing, and Taekwondo.

106 is the highest number of Blues ever awarded in a single year, but Team Monash Director Martin Doulton, who MC’d the event, said they were all “well deserved”.

“It was quite a unique process to make sure they were all suitably recognised,” he said.

“The volume reflects on both the quality of student athletes that we’ve had represent Monash this year, and their successes in the field of play across the board... The Blues committee make sure that the quality of the awards received this year are commensurate with the quality of the previous [55] years.”

TeamMONASH Director Martin Doulton said the highlight of the event was seeing the smiles on awardees faces as they were recognised by the University and their peers.

Throughout the year, students have represented the University and Country at various high level competitions, including the National University Championships and other Varsity competitions.

2018 UniSport National Div 1 Team Captain for Monash Laura Cummack (now there’s a mouthful!) said she has represented the university in Netball since her first year studying at Monash, and the highlight of each experience was “the people you meet along the way”.

“The team vibe is incredible, and you just make so many friends that you actually have something in common with. Not that you don’t in your courses, but it gives you an extra social circle that understand you in a way that other people just don’t,” she said.

“We’ve had a lot of fun catching up tonight, there’s been a lot of inside jokes throughout the year. We’ve kept a pretty solid team…, so by the end of [the year] we know each other quite well.”

Four time National University Championship Taekwondo representative Alice (Youngeun) Song described the whole experience as “really fun”.

“[The highlight] was being with my friends and being able to win. Last year I was the Team Organiser [for Taekwondo], so it meant more to me that we were able to win,” she said.

Alice’s team came first in the UniSport Div 1 Women’s and overall Taekwondo team, and said representing Monash has given her the opportunity to make friends from different Universities around Australia.

Awardees were invited to bring guests to accompany them to the event, and swimming star Luka Zubcic’s parents and sister came along with him to the sit-down dinner. His father, Ivan Zubcic, said he watched on livestream as the Monash Men’s Swim team win the Division 1 Championship at the National University Championships at the Gold Coast last year.

“We’ve seen him swim all his life, and we’ve been to all his meets and so forth. So we’ve been through the tough times and the good times,” Ivan said.

“It’s nice to be here to support him again tonight, and it’s just nice to have a bit of closure, in terms of recognition.”

Monash University Provost Marc Parlange and Blues Advisory Committee Chair Lucinda Dawson were also in attendance to recognise the athlete’s achievements.

Written by: Nell O’Shea Carre, Media Coordinator