Winnipeg’s 2026 RAW Summer Camp MVPs
September 21, 2026
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RAW Summer Camp 2026 · Winnipeg Five Days.Nine MVPs. Five days of competition in Winnipeg, and nine athletes walked out with hardware. Meet the 2026
RAW Summer Camp 2026 · Victoria
They came from Victoria, Courtenay, the Cowichan Valley, and one of them flew in from Southern California. They all left with hardware. Meet the athletes who owned the week at the 2026 RAW Summer Camp.
Nobody hands out an MVP medal on day one. At a RAW camp you earn it in the reps nobody films: the third one-on-one of the morning, the drill you lost yesterday, the walk back to the line when your legs are done.
Over a week in Victoria, nine athletes did exactly that. Different positions, different hometowns, different dreams. Same habit.
Here is the class.
The Roll Call
The lefty who makes a defence re-learn its rules.
Ask most quarterbacks to describe themselves and you get adjectives. Colton handed over a scouting report: accurate lefty passer. Three words, and every coach in the building already knows what they are dealing with, because a left-handed quarterback makes a defence think twice about everything it has practised.
He is class of 2029 with two championships already behind him, the 2025 JV Island title and the 2024 JB 9-Man Provincials. His favourite football memory is neither of them. It is the moment somebody told him he would be starting his first game at quarterback.
“All the hard work I do is starting to show and pay off.”
Colton Abanto
Six awards deep, and still collecting.
Read that hardware list again. Offensive MVP one year, Defensive MVP another, best offensive player and best defence at the same club. Marquise does not have a side of the ball, he has a trophy case.
He calls himself technical, agile and physical, which is the combination that lets a receiver win three different ways on three straight snaps. And the memory he picked is from the other side of the ball: a 103-yard pick-six. That is the full length of the field, plus the end zone he started in.
“It means a lot knowing that the coaches saw my strengths and my plays, and that they chose me as the best wide receiver out of the group.”
Marquise Halliman
Island roots, California Friday nights.
First high school game. Whiteout crowd. Karras was not expected to play. Then the chance arrived and, in his words, he balled out. Starting varsity as a freshman is rare anywhere. Doing it after a game you were not supposed to be in is a different story entirely.
He lives and goes to school in Southern California now, but the island is home, and it is where he came back to compete. Humble, hungry, hardworking is how he puts it. The target is a D1 offer, and while he would take any of them, one in the Northwest would mean the most.
“This is a great measurement of how much my recent training and work has improved me as a player, and a great way to get my name out there to the world. I want everyone to know my name.”
Karras Vandermade
Groovy, and the best defensive back on his team three years running.
Nine athletes filled out the same questionnaire and exactly one of them opened with groovy. Carter then followed it with leadership and competitive, which is the part his coaches would have written for him: a captain who has taken his team’s best defensive back award three separate times.
His goal is the one that stands out most in the whole group. He is not chasing a single school. He wants football in his life permanently, whether that is playing it, coaching it, or arguing about fantasy lineups thirty years from now.
“This award means to me that I have shown great leadership, playmaking ability, and coachability.”
Carter Gray
Thirteen years old with a university already picked out.
Liam is thirteen. He has already decided he is going to UBC. That gap between where he is and where he is going is the whole reason coachability matters more than anything else on his list, and it is the thing that won him this award.
Plenty of athletes say they are coachable. Liam described what it actually means: taking a correction on the sideline and using it on the very next snap. That is a harder skill than it sounds, and at camp it was on display all week.
“I’m a hard worker, and when coached I can turn around and use what I’ve learned in real time game scenarios.”
Liam Abbott
The camp’s top offensive player.
Across a week of competition against a deep offensive group, Kylen was the one the staff kept coming back to. Offensive MVP is the biggest award on that side of the ball, and it went to him.
Downhill, all week.
Running back is the position where the tape settles the argument. Gavin ran through a full week of live work against a defence that knew what was coming and kept getting what he wanted.
Wherever the ball went, he got there.
That is the whole job description at linebacker, and Callum did it rep after rep. A week of competition against a talented group, and the defence kept running through the middle of him.
Pressure up front, all week long.
Interior pressure changes everything behind it. Stefan spent the week making the quarterback’s clock run faster than it was supposed to, and the rest of the defence got to play easier because of it.
Nine athletes. Nine different routes. A thirteen-year-old who has already picked his university, a freshman starting varsity two provinces and a border away, and a captain who just wants football in his life for good.
What they share is the thing no award can hand you: they got better this week, on purpose.
Congratulations to Kylen, Carter, Colton, Gavin, Marquise, Karras, Stefan, Callum and Liam. We will be watching this season.
Camp MVPs, tag @rawsportsyyc when you post your award. Want your shot next summer? Registration for the 2027 RAW Summer Camps opens soon at rawsports.ca/.
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RAW Summer Camp 2026 · Winnipeg Five Days.Nine MVPs. Five days of competition in Winnipeg, and nine athletes walked out with hardware. Meet the 2026
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