Maclean High School captain Crystal Piper has taken out the Lions Club Regional Youth of the Year Award (YOTY) at the annual dinner, which was held at the Yamba Bowling Club on Saturday night. The candidates for this year’s Regional awards were: Jacob Switzer – Coffs Harbour Senior College; Jordan Smith – Grafton High School; Crystal Piper (this year’s winner) – Maclean High School; Awal Maker – Woolgoolga High School and Yee Ming Goh – Maclean High School. Jordan Smith took out the Lions Club Regional award for Public Speaking. The Lions Youth of the Year program is designed to encourage, foster and develop leadership in conjunction with other citizenship qualities in our youth, at the age when they are about to enter the fields of employment or higher education. The candidates are judged on a range of different qualities including academic attainments, general knowledge, leadership skills, personality, sportsmanship and public speaking. Judges for this year’s event were: Bradley Wood (Lions Club sponsor National Australia Bank, representative), Pam Wood (a budding author and experienced YOTY judge who has worked in the health industry in London, South Africa and Australia) and Bob Little (who has been a YOTY judge many times and owner of SPAR Maclean). This year’s winner Crystal Piper said that she is very competitive in all that she does. This shone through in her ‘Prepared Speech’ presentation entitled ‘The Lazy Generation’, on Saturday evening. ‘My involvement in sport has made me who I am,’ said Crystal. ‘It has shown me that there is no struggle that you cannot overcome and that when things get hard, you don’t give up, you try harder. ‘It has taught me to survive for success, not to be better than the person next to me but to be better than I ever thought I could be. That is the key to fulfilment.’ Crystal said that she was very grateful to the deputy principal of Maclean High, Tanya Kane. ‘Ms Kane has been very supportive all the way (with the Lions YOTY project),’ said Crystal. ‘She has given me tips which have helped build my confidence.’ Ms Kane told the Independent that Crystal has been ‘scouted’ (approached) by Harvard University and has been awarded a ‘rowing scholarship’ for her rowing and academic excellence, which is an awesome achievement for the Maclean High School captain.