SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The North American Indigenous Games are underway in Regina and the Circumpolar Northern Games have kicked off in Inuvik, both of which involve Team NWT.

Nadia Wood models the Team NWT jacket during a team building session on Monday in advance of the Jeux de la Francophonie Canadienne in Gatineau, Que. The opening ceremony takes place tonight. - James McCarthy/NNSL photo

But there is another group of athletes on the ground at a major event and it's one you probably didn't know about until now.

The Jeux de la Francophonie Canadienne, or the Canadian Francophone Games, get underway today in Gatineau, Que., as the NWT joins other provinces and territories in five days of sport and culture.

The team will be competing in badminton, track and field and three-on-three basketball and is made up of 15 athletes between the ages of 13 and 18 - eight from Yellowknife and seven from Hay River.

Rene O'Reilly will be coaching basketball but he's also been a driving force behind organizing the team this time around and he said the team was put together based simply on who wanted to go.

"Our pool of choosing the youth to go isn't as big as other events but we have some really great kids," he said. "We didn't really have tryouts except running a few basketball practices here."

Being a Francophone is a huge advantage to being part of the team but O'Reilly said that is not the deciding factor on who gets to go.

"If you're able to express yourself in French, you're pretty much guaranteed a spot on the team," he said. "If you were interested, we had a spot for you."

The event is a sport competition at the core and there are medals to be had for the top finishers in various sports. But the biggest thing, according to O'Reilly, is the cultural component.

He attended the games for the first time in 2011 as an athlete when the event was held in Sudbury, Ont., and he said that opened his eyes to just how big Francophone culture is around the country.

"It's very easy to feel isolated and to know there are seven million Francophones in Quebec but they want nothing to do with us," he said. "I got to go there and meet so many awesome people and had a great time with people I already knew and people I met for the first time. It was mind-boggling and I never expected it."

Bryan Tuyishime is going to the games for the second successive time and he will be playing in three-on-three basketball.

He was also a member of Team NWT at the 2014 Arctic Winter Games in Fairbanks, Alaska, in the full-court five-on-five version but he said the transition from full-court to three-on-three is quite easy.

"You don't really have to practise any plays for three-on-three," he said. "It's pretty straight-forward. It's half-court, you just want to try and go to the hoop and it's really the same game. It's basketball but I find you get to have a bit more fun with it and play around a little more."

Nadia Wood is on her way for track and field and it's her first time at the event but she is a veteran of the Canada Summer Games team from last year.

She said her big goal is to experience the event for the first time.

"Just to see how everyone else competes there," she said. "I just want to be able to compete and I know I may not do great there but I'm willing to try and that's exciting to me."

You would be forgiven if you didn't know about the games because there are so many others involving Team NWT, such as the AWG or the Canada Games, and O'Reilly understands that because there are so many events.

But for him and the rest of the team, it's all about promoting French culture, something he's been doing for several years in Yellowknife.

"I was born and raised here and that's been a big part of my life for so long," he said. "It is easy to feel like we're ignored but we have been trying to build relationships with coaches and Jacq (Brasseur) did a presentation at the Sport North annual general meeting and so we got the word out that way. We're hoping to grow each year and have a bigger and better team in 2017."

See the next edition of Yellowknifer for an update on the team's progress.

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