AFTER months of searching for the unsung heroes and heroines of our community, Trinity Mirror Cheshire – publisher of this newspaper – is delighted to announce the Chester winners in this year’s Your Champions awards.

They are:
Champion Person - Margaret McKeegan
Young Champion - Hannah Jones
Champion Team - City Fans United
Sporting Champion - Hayley Rogers
Champion School - Bunbury Aldersey CE School

Your Champions, launched in 1988 by Trinity Mirror and ScottishPower, pays tribute to all those community heroes who make a difference – the charity fundraisers, volunteers, environmental campaigners and carers.

Readers have put forward a large number of nominations through the  newspaper and online  and it was  an extremely  difficult decision selecting the champion person, young person, sporting champion, team and school for Chester from the worthy nominees.

Our local heroes and heroines will be honoured at a presentation ceremony at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Chester on Friday, when they will also be in the running for a regional champion of champions award with winners from other  newspapers in the Trinity Mirror Cheshire group.

The regional winners will be announced in next week’s paper.

Trinity Mirror Cheshire’s editor-in-chief, Eric Langton, said: “For more than 20 years The Chronicle and ScottishPower have been delighted to work together to recognise those people who make our region a better place to live.

“They are unassuming ordinary folk who do amazing things, usually without realising just how special they are. Trinity Mirror and ScottishPower  are both companies committed to supporting our local communities and it is a privilege to be able to bring those stories of sacrifice, endeavour, care and even courage to the notice of all our readers. The current Government talks about the Big Society – well, right here in Cheshire and Flintshire we have been celebrating exactly that for more than two decades. The finalists at Friday’s awards provide a heart-warming, and sometimes moving, picture of the best of our society.”