World number three squash player Alison Waters finally collected her Welwyn Hatfield Sports Awards Sport Person of the Year trophy at Campus West.

Unable to make the February ceremony, due to competing in America, the jet-setting star has continued her successes on court this year.

After the 31-year-old was handed her accolade by Peter Cabon of award sponsor Finesse Leisure, she chatted to the Welwyn Hatfield Times about her year.

“It’s nice to win Sports Person of the Year, it’s been a good season all in all and to be recognised by my now home town is a nice feeling,” said Waters, who moved to WGC in 2013.

“I’ve settled in well here and have training bases nearby so it makes things easy for me.”

Waters won bronze and silver medals at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and went on to take the World Team Championship crown with England in Canada before adding the European Team Championship title to that earlier this month.

January saw Waters make the Tournament of Champions final in New York beating world number one Nicol David on the way.

Domestic competition has seen some disappointment for Waters in 2015 with a semi-final defeat as she attempted to defend her national title in addition to a first round exit at the British Open.

“You have blips along the way,” she said. “I had one in the British Open, but that’s sport, at the end of the day you do have those moments and the way you come back from it is key.

“It’s not much fun at the time, but it makes you stronger and you don’t want too many experiences like that.

“The goods far outweigh the bad this year so I’ve got to be happy with that.”

The London-born player now heads to Egypt for the Alexandria International, the final tournament of her season, and a chance to put her British Open disappointment behind her.

“Having not had a very good British I want to try and finish on a good note then that takes you into the summer quite nicely, so the plan is to finish well,” she said.

“We start again in September so I get two and a half months training so that sets you up until Christmas.

“Summer training is the hardest amount we do, but you need that for the season.”

While Waters, who wants to compete at one more Commonwealth Games, has climbed back up to an equal career high of three in the world, getting her name etched onto more trophies is her primary target.

She added: “For me a ranking is nice, but you think about that more when you are younger. Obviously I want to get to world number one, but when you’re a bit older you want to win more titles that you can look back on when you retire.”