Your chance to crown Chichester district's top young sporting star

An amazing total of 390 nominations have been recevied across a range of categories.

The scheme is run by Chichester District Council in conjunction with the Observer and Rotary Club of Chichester Priory and aims to recognise the achievements of the district’s young sporting stars plus the volunteers and coaches who make them tick.

The awards will be handed out at a ceremony at Westgate Leisure on Saturday, June 11, but before then there’s an important job for Observer readers.

There’ll be prizes for coach of the year, volunteer of the year, young team of the year, young person’s commitment to sport, one-off performance of the year and outstanding contribution to youth sport.

As usual, the question of who wins the big prize of the night - the Dennis Polhill Youth Sport Achievement Award - is down to you.

This award is open to any young sportsman or woman in the district who has represented their country.

This year, we have had 16 ‘gold award’ nominees put forward, so the voting will be a two-stage affair.

In this week’s (May 12) Observer you will see details of all 16 nominees. We want you to vote for your favourite, and we will whittle down the shortlist to eight in the next couple of weeks.

Then, in our May 26 edition, we will publish the eight who are through to the final stage of voting.

Other votes for those eight will then be accepted, but votes cast in the initial stages will still count towards their final total.

You can vote ONLY by filling in the form on page 36 of this week’s (May 12) Observer and sending it to us at the Observer. No photocopies will be accepted. The deadline for voting at this first stage of the contest is 9am on Monday, May 23.