The 29th Annual Sports Awards Ceremony will be staged tomorrow night at the City Hall Theatre and a number of Bermuda's athletes who have excelled internationally are in with a good shout for the top awards – Male Athlete of the Year and Female Athlete of the Year.

And two of those athletes are from the sport of tennis, Tyler Smith and Gavin Manders, who have had excellent years on the courts.

Smith, who is still only 13 years old, won numerous international tournaments last year including those in Barbados and Panama and she also won Bermuda's own ITF Bank of Bermuda Foundation Tournament last summer. Earlier this year Smith, who is the best player in her age group in the Caribbean, played against the top players in South America in tournaments in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia when she was part of the ITF Central American and Caribbean Junior Team of 2010.

Manders ended last year with an undefeated record in all tournaments in singles. But more importantly the 23-year-old also helped Bermuda to advance in the Davis Cup to Group III. He has a Davis Cup record of 6-1 – an unprecedented overall record for a Bermuda player.

Two basketball players have also had a great year.

Erica Woods was selected for Great Britain's Under-20 team for the European Championship Games held in Macedonia and Greece and she has also had a superb season with Marshall University in West Virginia.

The 17-year-old made a big impression at the IMG Academies in Florida where she had been honing her skills in preparation for taking the next step of her promising career.

Jenaya Wade-Fray is one of the stars at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and recently became the fourth player in Southern Conference history with 200-plus career three-point field goals.

Equestrian Patrick Nesbitt last year did what no other local show jumper has ever done – qualify for the 2010 World Equestrian Games which will be held in Kentucky this year.

Nesbitt, who represented Bermuda at the 2007 Pan-Am Games in Brazil, qualified for the World Equestrian Games at a Grand Prix in Portugal last summer on Antille 8 at the Villamoura Grand Prix which gave him his entry into the Kentucky competition – a competition he said would be just as hard, if not harder, than the Olympics.

Golfer Robert Vallis also recorded a first by becoming the first Bermudian to win the British Senior Amateur Open.

Snipe and comet sailor, Stevie Dickinson, could also be in the reckoning after capturing an unprecedented 15th Long Distance Comet Race title, as well winning the Flag Pole to Flag Pole Comet Race.

Triathlete Tyler Butterfield, who represented Bermuda at the 2004 Athens Olympics before switching gears to become a full-time road cycle racer, made the switch back to triathlon and had a superb finish in September at the Monaco Ironman, coming third in the pro division. He is now targeting the 2012 Olympic Games in London as well as this year's Ironman in Hawaii.

Last year's Female Athlete of the Year, Kiera Aitken, not surprisingly had another very good year and became the first Bermudian female to break the one minute mark in the 100 metres backstroke.

The 2004 and 2008 Olympian set the new record at the Spanish short course Nationals in Madrid, where she also broke a host of other records. Aitken set her first record in the 50 metres back with a 27.72 that netted her a bronze medal finish. Next up was her main event, the 100m back where in the preliminaries she became the first Bermuda female to break the one minute mark with a time of 59.87. In the final she lowered that time to 59:31, and then rounded out the backstroke events with a 2:09.09 in the 200m in which she took two clear seconds off the previous record.

And up and coming swimmer Rebecca Sharpe also showed her style last year with a hat-trick of golds as Bermuda grabbed their biggest medal haul at the Carifta Swimming Championships in Aruba.

Competing in her final Carifta championships, Sharpe left the opposition trailing in her wake as she won the 50m, 100m, and 200m backstroke, all in record times. She also competed for the first time at the FINA World Championships last summer in Rome.