Local athletes crack rosters of Summer Games teams

There are just more than 50 days to go before the City of Greater Sudbury becomes overrun with young athletes, more than 3,000 strong, as this northern Ontario centre plays host to the Ontario Summer Games.

The 2010 four-day event marks the third time Sudbury has staged the Summer Games —the first since 1983, when the area was in the midst of a sports showcase extravaganza, welcoming the Canadian Games for the Physically Disabled, and countless other provincial and regional championships, as part of the Centennial Celebrations.

Thirty-one sports have confirmed their participation in this year’s games, with about one-third of those having finalized their list of entries, as local athletes begin to get the good news.

It’s a process that will drag on, in some cases, to as near as just a couple of weeks prior to the Games themselves.
But for many teenage hopefuls, the wait is over, as regional squads pencil in their respective rosters.

It’s no huge surprise that Sudbury content is front and centre within the Region 2 volleyball entries, as more than half of those suiting up for Team Northeast call the Nickel City home.

That local flavour is most prevalent with the boys’ group, as Phil Villeneuve, Josh Brown, Sean Moore, Evan Lielkalns, Marcus Goegan, Ryan Martel, Brandon Moore and Damjan Peric are among the dozen northerners looking to climb the steps of the Games podium in August.

The Northern Chill girls volleyball club is also well-represented, with club members Nicole Collard, Jaymie Adams, Allison Larson, Elie Kleppe and Sidney Boivin earning the right to wear the northern colours with home court advantage.

It’s a similar storyline with the northeastern Ontario regional swim crew, as seven young athletes from the Sudbury Laurentian Swim Club are among the 24-person contingent who should feel right at home at the Jeno Tihanyi Olympic Gold Pool in August.

Kelly Hotta, Kasey Thompson, Julie Langlois, Emily Whipple, Tori Jewell, Justin Burton-McCarthy and Jacob Toner will team with swimmers from Sault Ste Marie, North Bay and Timmins in attempting to duplicate some of the success enjoyed by local entries in Ottawa in 2008.

Toner and Langlois will have the opportunity to repeat, as both were medallists during the last set of the Games — part of the “group of seven” from the area who returned with hardware just two years ago.

The likes of Carly Staalstra, Justin Leclair, Hayden Kosmerly, Colin Hirschfeld and James Clendenning clearly set the bar high when it came to the performance of northern Ontario swimmers at the bi-annual multi-sport event.

While both the volleyball and swim delegations have only recently been informed of their spots on the roster, the Team North baseball reps, assembled by local teacher and former NCAA catcher Jean-Gilles Larocque, were among the first to find out, shortly after the Victoria Day weekend tryouts.

Chase Davidson, Cray Roberge and brothers Stetson and Tyson Troscinski all found their way on to the final lineup of 16 hardballers who will take to the diamond at the Brady Park Complex in Garson.

The team also includes six representatives from Sault Ste Marie, five from Thunder Bay and one from North Bay, making “team bonding” a challenging obstacle in the weeks leading up to the Games.

With basketball following the recent tradition of incorporating the MDP (Midget Development Program) directly into the OSG festivities, it’s a safe bet that Sudbury will have some hometown heroes to support when play begins on Aug. 11.

A twist of irony for a very familiar local face as talented Lockerby freshman Samantha Cooper will not get a chance to strut her stuff in front of family and friends, at least not as part of the Summer Games delegation.

Even better news for Cooper, who cracked the Basketball Ontario Provincial team roster for the first time, competing at the U15 National Championships at Humber College from Aug. 2-7.

The Sudbury Valley East Thunder U15 girls soccer team is fully aware of just how tough the competition is expected to be when they take on the role as “host team” for this Ontario Cup competition. Still, head coach Jeff Falcioni is busy preparing his young ladies for what should be a memorable experience.

While the final rosters for the canoe/kayak sprint competition will not be announced until late July, one can rest assured that plenty of attention is being paid to the performances of the Sudbury Canoe Canoe Sprint team, with fingers crossed for at least some local representation.

Naturally, there are a handful of events where there simply is an insufficient amount of local infrastructure in the sport to create the talent pool needed for young athletes to rise to the occasion, to compete on an even scale with many of the best from across Ontario.

And it remains the hopes of the Games committee that as part of the legacy of the 2010 competition, there will be an even fewer number of sports where Sudbury is not well-represented when we all gather one more time in the summer of 2012 to do it all over again.

Randy Pascal is the voice of Eastlink Sports and the founder of www.SudburySports.com.