2015 WBC Sportsmanship Award
Jan. 13, 2016

The BPA membership has elected Justin Rice as its 2015 Sportsmanship winner in the heaviest voting yet as 381 members cast votes for 15 candidates. Justin collected no less than 21% of those votes for being nominated in the Here I Stand event. As the first alternate for the Final, he was offered a seat by first-time qualifiers Ed and Matt Beach. At least one of the father and son duo was needed to GM their Junior event that conflicted with the Final. Justin, however, insisted that they BOTH play and instead volunteered to run the Junior event himself to enable them to do so. Both events went off without a hitch and with a record number of junior participants putting Justin to the test as he earned his free lodging prize at the next WBC.

Placing second with over 15% of the vote was popular BPA Board member and GMT spokesman Andy Lewis whose good intentions backfired when he volunteered to run a teaching game for new players of Roll For the Galaxy and did such a good job he managed to lose by a point.

Garnering third place with nearly 14% of the vote was Gordon Stewart for a decade of maintaining good cheer and a positive attitude despite enduring the daily challenges of navigating the Host's archaic handicap accessibility issues and coming back for more each year.

A couple of WBC regulars of long standing tied for 4th as Gregory Schmittgens and Peter Staab each garnered 9% of the vote. Greg is generally known as WBC’s most consistent smile machine as well as always being ready to lend a hand teaching games and doubling as a buttons and jerky dispenser. Peter corrected misplaced markers to his own detriment in Kremlin and voluntarily conceded his seat in the Kanban Final to a late arriving finalist to earn not one—but two GM nominations.

Grognard Greg Smith took sixth place with 5.7% of the vote to narrowly edge Fred Bauer and Mark Love for the sand position. He had volunteered to be the odd man out in all five rounds of War At Sea to eliminate any need for byes due to an odd number of players. As always, it was a classy group and we salute all our nominees for being the real attraction in our annual reunion.  

Sportsmanship Winners

Chuck Stapp
1992—NJ

Tiger Von Pagel
1993—FL

Rob Kilroy
1994—PA

Ian Lange
1995—ae

Jim Matt
1996—MI

Ed Connery
1997—NJ

Frank Sinigaglio
1999- NJ

Robert Sacks
2000—NY

Bret Hildebran
2001—OH

Kaarin Engelmann
2002, 2008—VA

James Jordan
2003—MD

Steve Okonski
2004—MD
Bruno Sinigaglio
2005—AK
Phil Barcafer
2006—PA
Rebecca Hebner
2007—CO
Mark Yoshikawa
2009—CA
John Emery
2010—SC
Larry Lingle
2011—PA
Peter Eldridge
2012—uk
Emily Wu
2013—NY
 
Tom Gregorio
2014—CA
Justin Rice
2015—VA
 
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