Team NWT says goodbye to week one
Boys' basketball, girls' soccer, track and field highlight opening week at Canada Summer Games
James McCarthy
Northern News Services
Monday, August 7, 2017
WINNIPEG
They may be beaten, they may be bruised and they may not have taken many wins, but Team NWT is still holding its heads high.
Skylar Horton of Hay River leaps into the pit during action in the girls long jump at the Canada Summer Games in Winnipeg on July 30. - Thorsten Gohl/Team NWT photo |
Week one of the Canada Summer Games in Winnipeg wrapped up on Aug. 5 with the boys basketball, girls' soccer and track and field teams waving the flag.
The actual flag waved high during the opening ceremony in July 28. Skylar Horton of Hay River had the honour of leading Team NWT in. Once that was over, it was time to hit the playing field.
The boys' basketball team took on Quebec in its opener, which was always going to be a daunting task against a province which has not only a major size advantage, but also the skill 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 much better prepared bunch which hit the court, said Wells, as they had played the same team in a pre-Canada Games tournament in Regina last month.
The one thing they weren't prepared for was a Newfoundland and Labrador squad that couldn't miss if they tried in the first half.
"We played a man-to-man defence and they would hit threes," 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, their team field goal percentage was approaching 80 per cent, meaning four out of every five shots attempted found the mesh. Even more impressive was a 66 per cent three-point success rate.
Losses to Saskatchewan and another one to Newfoundland and Labrador followed before the big game of the tournament against Yukon on Aug. 3. A game which Wells said they wanted to win simply because it was the battle of the North and it's always a grudge match.
In the end, the boys managed to get one up on their territorial brethren by winning it, 84-68, led by Yellowknife's Patrick Yatco dropping 31 points in a winning effort.
The girls' soccer team, meanwhile, had the misfortune of playing an entire tournament and failing to score a goal. It wasn't the easiest of opponents in game one on July 29 as Ontario was a challenge and it turned into a rough evening for the girls with a 16-0 loss.
Head coach Mike Doyle said it's always tough to play a big province right out of the gate and it's made even tougher when it's 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."
After a loss to Prince Edward Island, it was the inevitable battle with Yukon and it turned out to be their best game of the tournament. It ended in a 1-0 loss but the NWT scored the only goal of the game.
Too bad it was on their own goalie.
"Going back to the (2015 Western Canada Summer Games), Yukon has beaten us twice by a total of three goals and we've scored all three of them," Doyle said.
Aug. 2 was the final game for the girls. They took on New Brunswick and a 7-0 loss confirmed their winless and goalless tournament.
The girls gave up three goals in the first 15 minutes of that contest and Doyle said that makes a hard job even worse.
"We haven't been able to accomplish some of the team goals we set out and not conceding early goals was one of them," he said. "We try to hold off but the girls just couldn't seem to get into it and by the time we knew it, we were down a bunch."
Track and field, meanwhile, saw a smaller team of four athletes take on the best in the country. The big result was Skylar Horton managing to get into the final of the girls' long jump on Aug. 4 after a 12th place finish in the preliminary round.
Head coach Joe Leblanc said her result was even more impressive because of the rough conditions she faced in qualifying.
"The heat and humidity were ridiculous," he said. "Still, she jumped close to her best and qualified for the final and that was a great result for me and I'm sure for her. There were big jumpers in that and making the finals is just a bonus."
Horton also set the new NWT senior women's triple jump record in that event with a leap of 11.12 metres. The 14th place finish meant she just missed out on the finals.
Week two got underway on Aug. 6 with golf, tennis, boys and girls' indoor volleyball and boys' soccer being the events the territory is competing in.
See the next edition of NWT News/North for the round-up.
