As mentioned in a previous article, Donnie Cooper (Peewee Volunteer of the Year), Todd Shepherd (Bantam Volunteer of the Year) and Bruce & Sue Watts (Lifetime Achievement) were recognized at the 2012 FNB Awards Luncheon held at the Trade and Convention Center on April 15th. Please see below, the write ups as they appeared in the program.

Donnie Cooper

For the last 40 years each fall has found Don Cooper patrolling the sidelines of Saint John’s Shamrock Park. The year was 1972 and Don McLean’s "American Pie" was the top hit when Don first coached the Central Saints of the then Saint John Minor Football Association.

During this time hundreds of boys and a few girls have had the pleas-ure of claiming Don as their coach. Don has had the pleasure of coaching a number of children of former players. Parents bring their kids to practice proudly stating that Don was their coach!

Don was fortunate to have coaches like Fran Hughes and Fran McHugh as mentors and role models. Many years ago Don received his FNB lifetime ring in the company of Fran Hughes along with fellow peewee coach Mike Upward.

"Coop", as he is affectionately called by his players, has seen a num-ber of quality athletes come through his program and go onto success in higher levels of football and in life in general. A notable athlete was running back Craig Carr who played with the CIS Manitoba Bi-son's and was drafted 10th overall in the 2000 CFL draft by the Ed-monton Eskimos and also played with Calgary and Montreal.

Don has recently retired after a 38 year career with the Saint John Police Force. Shift work often meant Don would appear at practices and games in full uniform. This and his involvement in the commu-nity made him a positive role model that players and former players often turned to in times of need. Don has taken his Saint’s to 2 pro-vincial finals, however he does not measure his successes by the number of victories but by the positive influence he has had on all his players.

Even though Don has retired from policing he has indicated he has no plans to retire from coaching.

Todd Shepherd

Todd Shepherd started coaching in 1997, helping with Don Cooper’s Central Saint of the Fundy Minor Football Association (FMFA). In 1998 Todd moved to the Lancaster Abbies for their inaugural season coaching with Mike Upward. Todd stayed with the Abbies for about 8 seasons before he moved up to the Lancaster Vikings of the bantam division, primarily as a defensive coach.

During this time frame Todd has coached special teams initially with the Saint John Longhorns for two years and then spent an additional two years with the Saint John Wanderers of the MFL.

While with the Wanderers Todd and another member of the team organized a U16 flag football tournament that was held at the Canada Games Stadium.

Todd has also been the FMFA youth flag coordinator for the past 4 years, handling this key division which introduced players to Football. For the past 2 years Todd as also acted as the Football New Brunswick representative on the Football Canada Flag Committee.

In 2011 Todd took over for the first time as a head coach and led his Lancaster Cowboys to their best record ever. Todd’s love for the sport of Football shines through and he truly enjoys teaching kids about teamwork, discipline and most of all having fun.

Todd wishes to acknowledge the mentors he has had over the years and contributes much of his success to them.

Bruce & Sue Watts

Bruce Watts began his involvement with football in 1967 as a player with the West Bantam Blue Bomber. This year was extra special in that the Blue Bombers flew to Halifax and beat the Halifax Bears 21-0 to win the Maritime Championship in this the inaugural year of foot-ball in Saint John.

In 1969 Bruce became an official and joined the New Brunswick Foot-ball Officials Association (NBFOA) where for the next 10 years he worked at minor, high school and eventually university level games.

In the 1980’s Bruce worked with the Major Events Committee to host 2 CFL Exhibition games in the newly constructed Canada Games Sta-dium.

In 1990 Bruce began his coaching career with this son Jeff coaching the Lancaster Abbies peewee team in the Fundy Minor Football Asso-ciation (FMFA). Since then Bruce has coached the Abbies excepting for the 4 years he had moved up to coach the Lancaster Vikings in the bantam division.

A highlight of that time was the 3 undefeated season with the Abbies from 2008-10. Two of those three seasons saw the Abbies advance to the provincial finals. Bruce has also coached many age groups in-cluded the U14, U16, and U18 in the Fundy spring development pro-grams.

He has been an executive member and game day coordinator for the UNB Saint John Seawolves of the Atlantic Football since its inception in 2009. In 2010-11 he organized exhibition games with US College Teams - Illinois State & Husson College.

Since 2000 Bruce has been an executive member of the Fundy Foot-ball as a Scheduler, Division Coordinator, Vice President and as of 2011 President.

For the last two years Bruce has sat on the Football New Brunswick’s Tackle Committee as the Fundy representative.

Bruce as been a key promoter of the new Tyke (8-9 yr. old) Tackle Football program which will debut in Saint John in 2012.

He truly loves the game of football, the people and working with the kids and the volunteers.

Bruce’s wife Sue is an avid promoter of Bruce’s involvement in foot-ball. She has been pictured on the front page of the local paper with her pom-poms promoting the Seawolves booster club and has helped organize the annual Fundy volunteer recognition night.