2009 Jessilou Tongio & Tyler King

2009 Student Award

Tyler King & Jessilou Tongio

In 2009 two students receive a Bursary Award. Tyler King of Bath, Ontario, just graduated from Queen’s University will work on a Masters Degree at Syracuse U and Jesilour Tongio continues her Journalism studies at Ryerson.

Tongia & King

After graduating from Queen’s University, King already had a well-rounded resume. He hosted his own weekly sports talk show for the campus radio station, earned a multi-year gig as the school’s hockey and basketball play-by-play commentator and covered the Kingston Frontenacs as a TV feature reporter and backup host of The OHL Tonight.

Hoping to gain an edge in the job market, the Toronto native is now completing a Master’s degree in broadcast journalism at Syracuse University. “The guy is very good,” notes Toronto Sun TV critic and former NBA reporter Bill Harris after reviewing King’s demos. “He’s calm … better than a lot of guys working professionally today that I’ve seen … I say show him the money!”

For years, Jesilou Tongio worried that her given name wasn’t suited to a byline. “I hated that Microsoft Word always underlined it with a red squiggle as if it was a typo. And it got to me that female sportscasters all had names like Jennifer, Sara and Holly,” she says.

But Tongio, 20, learned to care less about those things and more about what feels right. Basketball and hockey features – on camera and in print – ensued. “It’s all prep work,” she says, for a seminal moment in her dream career – a double-digit drama for which Toronto hockey fans have waited decades.

A life-long NHL enthusiast, Tongio, 20, plans to be on the sidelines, as a reporter, when the Stanley-Cup starved Maple Leafs finally turn 13 into 14.