Tiff Forbes

2020-08-06T13:29:28

In its 56 years of operation, the prestigious Monash University ‘Blues Awards’ have been presented to a carefully selected cohort of students in recognition of their outstanding sporting performance and dedication throughout the year.

Many of our former Blues stars have since gone on to become Olympic medallists, World Cup champions and record holders. Whilst others have progressed to compete against the global elite at the Commonwealth Games, Wimbledon and at our very own Australian Open.

We think this speaks volumes about the level of talent and drive you will find embedded within every single one of our esteemed Blues athletes.

2019’s incredible recipients were supposed to be celebrated at an event in March, and whilst we would have loved to celebrate them together as a community, lockdown restrictions did not permit the event to go ahead. We have since decided to combine our 2019 & 2020 awardees in a grand ceremony next year when the time allows.

Despite this, we still want to commend our new recipients for their achievements – even if that acknowledgement happens to look a little different this year! In the last few weeks awards have been sent out via mail and the students have been encouraged to share their achievements on our social media platforms. We hope you will join us as a Monash community to celebrate their efforts online!

National volleyball champ and 2019 award recipient, Eliana Adler was disappointed she wasn’t able to share the achievement with her like-minded peers face-to-face, but has since celebrated with our online community,

“Thank gosh for social media! It definitely wasn’t the experience we were all hoping for, but the ability to still see the positives (no matter how small) and enjoy a laugh in the moment makes this all the more memorable. I can’t wait to celebrate in-person and snap some memories with some of my favourite people. COVID-19 has definitely made us retrain our mentality and our perceptions of happiness,” she said.

TeamMONASH Director Martin Doulton agreed that this wasn’t the way he envisioned the celebration either but is extremely proud of the calibre of hard work and dedication that went into representing Monash.

“While 2020 is turning out to be a year of unwanted firsts the one thing we can be assured of is that our students' performances when wearing the University colours in 2019 was once again quite outstanding. Thank you to our 2019 Blues awardees for being the epitome of what it means to 'Bleed Blue' and to have represented the University with such pride and passion,” he said.

Over 1800 Blues awards have been bestowed since 1963, all assessed and presented by a committee of Monash University graduates and previous Blues award winners. Current Blues committee member, Monash Science and Law graduate and 2005 Blue recipient Dani Jones is extremely proud of the 2019 awardees and has since been even more impressed with their resilience in these tough times. "Yes it is extremely disappointing that we could not get together this year to celebrate and welcome the new Blues into the team in person, but the support I have seen through social media has been wonderful and I commend all awardees for their strength, loyalty and commitment to each other."

A massive congratulations to all of our Blues recipients, past and present! Find out more about the Blues Awards here!

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