{"id":530284,"date":"2026-03-12T00:49:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T00:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/530284\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T00:49:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T00:49:10","slug":"winnipeg-blue-bombers-kicker-sergio-castillo-wins-pair-of-community-awards-winnipeg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/530284\/","title":{"rendered":"Winnipeg Blue Bombers kicker Sergio Castillo wins pair of community awards &#8211; Winnipeg"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One player won both of the <a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/tag\/winnipeg-blue-bombers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Winnipeg Blue Bombers<\/a> annual community service awards in the same year for the first time in club history.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/70c8fc80.png\" alt=\"\" style=\"position:absolute;width:1px;height:1px\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Kicker Sergio Castillo was named the winner of both the Ed Kotowich \u2018Good Guy Award\u2019 and the Cal Murphy \u2018Heart of a Legend Award\u2019 on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>The \u2018Good Guy Award\u2019 is for excellent football ability, leadership, and work in the community, while the \u2018Heart of a Legend Award\u2019 is for outstanding sportsmanship and dedication to both the CFL and the community.<\/p>\n<p>The 35-year-old Castillo partners with the Dream Factory and KIDTHINK, while also visiting local hospitals and attending football clinics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting any of this, so it\u2019s definitely an honour,\u201d said Castillo in a media release. \u201cAll I can say is, \u2018Wow,\u2019 and I\u2019m very appreciative.<\/p>\n<p>Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou do things not expecting anything in return. You do it because we have a responsibility, especially playing for the Blue Bombers, to represent the \u2018W\u2019 on and off the field.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The \u2018Good Guy Award\u2019 was first presented in 1987 and is named after Kotowich who played for the Bombers from 1955-1961 and also coached the Winnipeg Rods before his sudden passing in 1986.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-video__image\" alt=\"Click to play video: 'Winnipeg Blue Bombers sign Super Bowl champion QB Bryce Perkins'\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/7e132025afe5515ac8a08586feb5b891471745bcc3fdb6d9caad5717bc3da224.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\"   data-\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t0:28<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWinnipeg Blue Bombers sign Super Bowl champion QB Bryce Perkins\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>The \u2018Heart of a Legend Award\u2019 is named after the former Bombers general manager and head coach who died in 2012. The award has been handed out since 2001.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"170\" height=\"225\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767930311_275_national.jpg\" alt=\"Get daily Canada news delivered to your inbox so you'll never miss the day's top stories.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\tGet daily National news<\/p>\n<p>Get daily Canada news delivered to your inbox so you&#8217;ll never miss the day&#8217;s top stories.<\/p>\n<p>Nic Demski (Ed Kotowich Award) and Tanner Cadwallader (Cal Murphy Award) were last year\u2019s recipients.<\/p>\n<p>The Bombers also find themselves down a quarterback after their fourth stringer from last season hung up the cleats. QB <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cfl.ca\/players\/chase-artopoeus\/168892\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chase Artopoeus<\/a> announced his retirement on social media at the age of just 25.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\tMore on Sports<br \/>\n\t\t\tMore videos\n\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n<p>He dressed for only six games last season as a rookie and didn\u2019t throw a single pass in the regular season.<\/p>\n<p>In an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DVtigEWDX3q\/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&amp;igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Instagram post<\/a>, Artopoeus thanked everyone along the way.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo grateful to have played the sport and position I love for a long time,\u201d he posted. \u201cRecently, after a lot of thinking and looking towards the future, I took a step back and decided to officially step away and retire from the CFL.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Bombers still have four quarterbacks under contract with Zach Collaros and Terry Wilson both returning, while they\u2019ve also added Bryce Perkins and Payton Thorne this off-season.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t&amp;copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One player won both of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers annual community service awards in the same year for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530285,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82,7504,2705],"class_list":["post-530284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-sports","tag-winnipeg-blue-bombers","tag-winnipeg-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}