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Beaten but not bruised
Team NWT takes its lumps in opening days of Canada Summer Games but not deterred

James McCarthy
Northern News Services
Tuesday, August 1, 2017

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Every time team NWT travels to the Canada Games, be it winter or summer, it girds itself for an uphill battle. So in the first few days of competition at this year's Summer Games in Winnipeg the team was ready and resilient in the face of the bigger provinces, who often come loaded to kill two bears.

The opening ceremony kicked things off this past Friday with track-and-field competitor Skylar Horton of Hay River leading the way as flag bearer. Once the pomp and circumstance was out of the way, boys' basketball and girls' soccer were up the next day.

The boys basketball outfit took on Quebec in its opener -- a daunting task against a province which has a major size advantage and the skills to match. In the end, the boys fell 124-47.

A rough night at the office, for sure, but head coach Aaron Wells said his young troops simply fell victim to an awful case of stage fright.

"Quebec's a big team and we've never seen that sort of height on a regular basis," he said. "The nerves were certainly there but we didn't do ourselves any favours with turnovers and missed lay-ups. It was an adjustment period for us and the kids knew they were going to be on the short end of the stick." With game one out of the way, the boys regrouped to take on Newfoundland and Labrador on Sunday. It was a better prepared bunch that hit the court, said Wells, who mentioned they had played the same team in a pre-Canada Games tournament in Regina last month.

But the one thing they weren't prepared for was a Newfoundland and Labrador squad that couldn't have missed if they tried in the first half.

"We played a man-to-man defence and they would hit three(pointer)s," said Wells. "We switched to a zone defence and they were hitting threes. We tried to simply contest them every single time on the perimeter and they would hit threes."

Newfoundland and Labrador was so hot at one point that their team field goal percentage was approaching the 80 mark, meaning four out of every five shots attempted found the mesh. Even more impressive was a 66 per cent three-point success rate.

"That's going to happen sometimes and there's nothing you can do about it," said Wells. "You can't defend a team that hits almost everything, even when you're in their face. We just got behind too fast and our goal was to cut the lead down in the second half but we came out too flat in the third quarter."

Newfoundland and Labrador took the game 108-61.

In the case of the girls' soccer team, game one on Saturday was a particularly brutal debut. Ontario was the challenger on a rough evening for the girls who were eventually consigned to a 16-0 loss.

Head coach Mike Doyle said it's always tough to play a big province right out of the gate - especially when that province is Ontario.

"They have some clubs there whose membership is almost as big as the population of Yellowknife," he said. "The result didn't matter to us because we knew it wasn't going to go our way but we did have goals to accomplish by halftime, some of which we didn't get, but we managed to have some success in the second half in what we wanted to do."

The team regrouped for game two against Prince Edward Island on Saturday, which began well enough with the girls managing to hold P.E.I. at bay after conceding an early first goal. The scoreline read 2-0 at halftime and there was a genuine belief that the team could come back to win.

However, fitness became an issue as the game dragged on, said Doyle.

"We were lucky because our first two games were played at night but it's still 30 C, even in the evening," he said. "We're playing on FieldTurf and that just makes it hotter because it doesn't absorb heat like grass does. They hung on as best as they could but it came down to pure and simple fitness and we just couldn't keep up down the stretch."

Final score: 6-0 for the bad guys.

While Doyle was fine with the P.E.I. score, he said he believes it does no one any good when teams like Ontario blow the NWT out of the water because the result is never in doubt.

He has a way to help solve the problem: promotion and relegation.

"Think of it in the way of soccer in Europe," he said. "The major professional leagues all have promotion and relegation and I think we should go to that system in the Canada Games."

Doyle's suggestion is taking the top four teams and placing them in Pool A, the next best four in Pool B and the next four in Pool C. If a team finishes last in Pools A or B, they're relegated to the pool below; Pool C's basement-dweller would simply stay where they are. Any team winning Pools B or C would be promoted. The top three teams in Pool A would win the medals.

"It's such a simple system but it provides more meaningful games instead of having games like the one we had against Ontario," said Doyle. "There's more competition because you're playing for something."

Track and field also got going on Monday with heats in the 100-metre dash taking place. Lance Dizon competed in the boys' event and finished seventh in his heat, not good enough to advance to the final.

See the next edition of Yellowknifer for the next update on Team NWT.

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