Scott Radley: Mackenzie Hughes is the area’s top athlete. Again.
He played volleyball and badminton in high school. And golf, obviously. But in those days he never considered himself a superstar athlete. It was the basketball stars and quarterback and hockey players who carried that title in his teenage mind.
Those people, to me, were the jocks," Mackenzie Hughes says.
Funny how life goes. Because none of them have been named Golden Horseshoe Athlete of the Year three times.
He has.
The 31-year-old Dundas native's third nod as top athlete from the Hamilton and Burlington area came when he was announced as the 2021 winner on Tuesday morning.
In golf I don't get to win a super high percentage (of tournaments)," an appreciative-sounding Hughes says. So any time you can win an award, they're all a feather in your cap."
Despite the fact that COVID ravaged the sports schedule for a chunk of the year, there were plenty of other legitimate and worthy candidates. Including the two finalists.
Darnell Nurse had a terrific year for the Edmonton Oilers, collecting career bests in goals (15), spending more time on the ice per game (26:17) than all but one player in the league and finishing seventh in Norris Trophy Voting. He had also been a finalist in 2015, the year he backstopped Canada to a gold medal at the World Junior Hockey Championship.
Milan Borjan was the other finalist.
A year ago, you might've said, Milan who? No longer. The goalie for Canada's national soccer team has become a star across the national landscape for some ridiculous and crucial saves throughout this country's journey to (hopefully) its first World Cup berth since 1986.
But it's not just those highlight-reel stops that earned him this consideration. The graduate of Glendale Secondary as well as East Hamilton Soccer Club and Mount Hamilton Soccer club helped his team to the SuperLiga title as well.
Ultimately though, Hughes again set the bar.
He finished second at the RSM Classic, fourth at the ZOZO Championship, finished 2021 ranked 11th in FedEx Cup points and represented Canada at the Tokyo Olympics.
But what really put the exclamation point beside his year was starting in the final group on Sunday at the U.S. Open. And but for a bit of the worst luck in golf history - it won't take you long to count the number of players who've had their ball get stuck in a tree in the last round of a major while in contention - things might've been even more incredible.
I'd be lying if I hadn't thought about that a bunch," Hughes says. Do I wonder what my life would be like right now as U.S. Open champion? Sure."
The Golden Horseshoe Athlete of the Year Award obviously isn't that but it still matters to him.
He previously won in 2013 when he qualified as an amateur for the U.S. Open and then again three years later when he won an event on the PGA Tour.
He and swimmer Joanne Malar are the only three-time winners of the award that has been handed out since 1995.
This just adds to a pretty incredible stretch for the Highland Secondary grad. In October he was inducted into Kent State University's sports hall of fame. And on Friday, he was put on the Dundas Sports Wall of Fame.
I certainly don't look past these kinds of things," he says. They all have different meaning to my life at different time periods."
Ironically, even as this year's winner was being announced, next year's award has probably already been locked up. Someone's going to have to do something pretty darn incredible to knock off Sarah Nurse who just set a record for most points in a single Olympics while winning a gold medal.
For today though, Hughes gets to enjoy another pat on the back from his hometown.
Back to those high school days. He was never the star on campus. Never won the male athlete of the year. Best he can recall he was never really in contention.
There was a Hughes who did, though. His sister, Alex. She was the female athlete of the year at Highland. Twice.
So she has that on me," he says.
Scott Radley is a Hamilton-based columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sradley@thespec.com