Author Archives: Scheila Masinda

The women’s hockey team has announced their line up for tryouts for the Winter Olympic games.

Posted on by
Reply

Hockey Canada has announced that 28 women have been selected to meet in Calgary for the upcoming 2021-2022 season before the 2021 Winter Olympic Games.

Out of the 28 players, image 14 have earned a silver medal in PyeongChang, South Korea as members of the 2018 Olympic team. The team Includes captain Marie-Philip Poulin, forwards Sarah Nurse, Natalie Spooner, and the goaltender Ann-Renee Desbiens and more. Team Canada will be spending their time in the 2021 -2022 season playing their games against the United States, Junior A teams from the Alberta Junior Hockey League, and probably a series versus Finland if the pandemic allowing it.

The roaster was selected by head coach Troy Ryan at the consultation with national team director Gina Kingsbury.

.                                                 (Hockey Canada)

Gina Kingsbury said, “When we started this Olympic quad in the fall of 2018, our road to 2022 looked very different,”. “Through adversity, in particular a lack of international competition over the last 14 months, our athletes have stayed focused, committed to their training, and ready to compete when the time came. We had some difficult decisions to make, but that just shows how hard our athletes have worked on and off the ice for the opportunity to centralize and get a chance to compete for 23 Olympic roster spots. We have several veterans on this roster in addition to some young athletes who have earned this opportunity.” ​

.                                                (Hockey Canada)

The women’s Hockey Team is going to have a great opportunity to practice for the next season before the winter Olympics. They with season vets and new players ready and hungry to represent the Canadian team, surely, they should be winning some games to make us proud. Especially with the 23-Year-old Loren Gabel, she might have the most star power. She has won the Patty Kazmaier the top US College women’s player as a senior. She has been with team Canada since the 2018 Fourth Nation’s Cup. She scored 40 goals in a season. Wow!

 

The Women’s Canadian team has solidified their spot in the Olympics.

Posted on by
Reply

The Canadian softball team has named recently named the 15 women that will represent Canada at the Tokyo Olympics.

It has been more than 12 years since softball was played at the Olympics. In 2008 at the Beijing Olympics, they came into 4th place. At the London 2012 Olympics and Rio 2016 Olympics, the sport was not performed.

The team qualified for its Olympic spot after finishing in the top two along with Mexica at the September 2019 Americas qualifier event in Surrey, B.C.

Catcher Kaleigh Rafter said, “There is no greater privilege than to wear Canada across your chest and represent the most amazing country and fans”. For me, this is the last step in a 14-year journey that dates back to 2007,”. “I want to give a big thank you to my family who has supported this dream of mine since the very beginning.”

Another player from the team, Pitcher Sara Groenewegen, from Surrey, B.C., says the team is thrilled to mark its Olympic return.

She also say’s “It takes a village to prepare for the Games, and even though 15 women were named to this roster, there were countless other people involved to prepare us for this moment. We are excited and ready for the chance to make history in Tokyo.”

Canada is currently ranked in third place in the Women’s Softball World Rankings and has won three bronze medals. They won back-to-back bronze in 2016 and 2018 over the last five world champions.

The Olympic softball tournament will be from July 22-July 27 at the Fukushima Azuma Baseball Stadium and the Yokohama Baseball Stadium.

These women have been preparing for this, and they are ready to rock At the Olympics. It will be a feeling of pride to see them play, after not being able to see them represented in years. Good luck to the Canadian Women’s softball team

Can Canada’s basketball team qualify for the Olympics?

Posted on by
Reply

The last time the Canadian national team qualified was in 2000. The game that seals their faith is scheduled to be from June 29th to July. 4th in Victoria, BC.

This tournament has been in the works for the last two years after being delayed due to the pandemic. The big hope is that the tournament will go well without further hurdles, barriers, or hick-ups and that the Canadian men’s national team can win all six competitions.

That’s the main reason why it inspired Clint Hamilton to put in a bid to host the event. He say’s “It was amazing how things fell into place. Of course, when we did that no one anticipated the pandemic and the impact that’s had on the world of sports.”

He also added “The reason we went forward brazenly to get the event is we believe this could be an inflection point for the game, building off of what the Raptors did [in winning the NBA title in 2019],” he said in a recent interview. “We want this to be a celebration. We wanted basketball fans to be part of what we think is going to be a spectacular basketball competition.”

With the pandemic postponing things, it was disappointing, but Grunwald and Hamilton are confident that this tournament will still happen as planned and even if it seems that the Federal Government isn’t showing signs of waving the COVID-related border restrictions.

“Each team has their protocols, and the expectation is that they will arrive in Canada COVID-free,” says Hamilton. “From there they are in a very tight bubble that brings them into the living, training and competition environment and we have access to daily testing in a way that we can ensure there is no outbreak … that allows the exemption to the quarantine rules for the single sport events to occur.

But when they won the bid within a week or two, they had emails from players reaching out. He say’s “Think about it: when you’re a local organizing committee and you take this big step and you know what you want to do to help Team Canada … I can’t understate how inspiring it is to see how the players responded.”

That is very true, hopefully, after the year we have had we can see our national Basketball team can do us proud.

 

 

The Tampa Bay Lighting Make NHL history.

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday the Lighting’s have made NHL history by starting an all-Black line in a game against the Florida Panthers.

The team started three Black men that are forwards in their regular-season finale against the Panthers on Monday night. This was the absolute first time that has ever happened in the NHL. Daniel Walcott, Mathieu Joseph, and Gemel Smith are the first three Black men once to play on the ice at once, this is important because other Black children, Black boys, Black girls can feel like the is some representation for them in the sport.

For this Game Daniel Walcott had already been feeling so excited to be in his first NHL game, it was even more exciting to him to see how his debut would happen.

(Associated Press/Reuters/Getty Images)

Tampa Bay’s coach Jon Cooper say’s “First of all, they’re all in the NHL for a reason, they deserve to be here and have worked their tails off. To have them all together, they had a little chemistry. Moving forward in the league, you hope it isn’t a story any more and will be the norm. It was a pretty cool moment for all those guys.”

The starting lineup was applauded by the panthers, Anthony Duclair that is Black and a player for the Panthers took notice in the locker room and was moved. He said, “that’s great to see, the way that the NHL is moving forward, it’s great to see for those guys and I’m sure it was a special night for them.”

Mathieu Joseph seemed to be very elated he has this to say, “It was great, man, a step in the right direction. It was fun to have some progress and it was great to see and I was glad I was part of it. … Any players of color in this league want to showcase to our families or other people of color. I thank the coaching staff for doing this.”

Daniel Walcott hopes that this will give interest in hockey to young Black kids. He said “This is a whirlwind of emotion, a long time coming,” Walcott said. “To get into that starting lineup was great. … Coop did something really special here to promote this for young kids.”

Change is a beautiful thing to see!

 

 

Team Canada Softball player chose to come back to the sport she loves 1,398 days ago

Posted on by
Reply

Danielle Lawrie, Team Canada Softball player chose to come back to the sport she loves 1,398 days ago.

She is the mother of two little girls, and she decided to come back to the sport one more time. She was watching the World Cup of Softball, she was watching a play-by-play by commentator Tiffany Green asked analyst Michele Smith a question about when she felt she was at her best as an athlete, and she said around the age of 34-35. That is when a light bulb moment happened for Danielle.

She was 30 years old, and she had represented her country many times when she hung up her cleats in 2014. Her oldest was 6 months old at the time-traveling alongside her. She had felt that then she had felt like she had accomplished everything. But when she the comment that Michele Smith’s made about her age, she felt like she can decide to go back to the sport. It took some time to convince her husband, but he knew how much the sport meant to her and he knew how much it would be an incredible moment it would potentially be to finish at an Olympic Games as a mother of two.

The moment she made her choice she reached out to Team Canada coach Mark Smith and they arranged a meet-up at the Canada Cup. They laid everything on the table, and she was ready to hit the tryout camp in January 2018.

She says’ If you told me how challenging this journey would be, I wouldn’t have believed you. It has been the hardest thing I have done as an athlete, a mother, a wife, and a teammate. I suffered anxiety like never before. I had to seek out a sports psychologist”

Being back in the game as a mother of two and having an additional year of training because of Covid-19 has changed her life for the better. Her love and respect have evolved. She has always been a hard worker but being able to be part of one of the best teams requires a selfless work ethic.

She says as a momma, you just don’t have as much time as everyone else to get stuff done, because your kids need your time too.”

Tyler Motte has been nominated for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy.

Posted on by
Reply

Tyler Motte is one of 31 nominees for the 2021

Did you know that this trophy recognizes, perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to hockey very cool! When he learned that he was Vancouver’s chapter of the Professional Hockey Writer’s association’s nominee for the Bill Masterton Trophy he says it was “humbling”.

He has been seen working hard on the ice and in the last 18 months, he has been a strong voice for mental health and sharing his own experience of dealing with depression and anxiety. He say’s “I’m still learning a lot about my issues, but I think I’ve just found that it’s OK to not be OK. It’s OK to feel the way you’re feeling and you’re not alone and I think that has only become more clear to me”.

Motte had to do some hard work to get to where he is today. It helped him find the voice to speak up about mental health. He has recently created his own “Motter’s Mental Health Fund” the proceeds benefiting mental heal initiatives and foundations.

Motte has also shown a lot of support for women’s hockey, he says “We can’t just support the men’s side, we support the women as well. There’s a lot of talented women out there, through the college game up into pros, and little things like this is something easy that we can do to show our support for them,”

The Masterton Trophy is given out by the PHWA every season. Every chapter nominates a player and the association’s membership picks a winner.

Interesting fact: This trophy is named for Bill Masterton, a Minnesota North Stars center who died in January 1968 of injuries suffered in an NHL game the only NHL play to have gone through that kind of fate.