Ready to tee off
P.E.I.’s Canada Games golf team polishing their clubs for Winnipeg
Golf was introduced as a demonstration sport during the 2009 Canada Games and has continued as part of the regular calendar of sports.
This year’s golf team will be sending a full complement of athletes, including three male and three female golfers. The Sean Joyce-coached team was selected this past weekend after participating in the Atlantic championships in Church Point, N.S. This event was the final of six qualifying tournaments played in 2017 to select the team.
The men will be represented by Tyler Hashmi, Alex Taylor and Jason Poley while the women’s team is made up by Lexi Murphy, Mya Chisholm and Reese MacDonald.
While in Winnipeg the team will compete at the Southwood Golf and Country Club in team and individual play. The competition gets started on Tuesday, Aug. 8, after the athletes have had a few days to familiarize themselves with the course.
During the past eight weeks I’ve introduced you to the 21 sport teams that will be representing P.E.I. at these 50th Canada Games. There is one other team that has been working behind the scenes to ensure all the logistical planning is looked after. This is the mission staff and is led by chef de mission Brian McFeely and consists of 14 other sport volunteers. Each week, part of this group will be on the ground in Winnipeg supporting our teams by looking after the non-competition requirements so the teams can focus on competing.
The mission staff will also be working in partnership with Jason Malloy of The Guardian, who will be in Winnipeg, to tell the stories of the Games from a P.E.I. perspective. Jason will be telling those stories through The Guardian and Journal Pioneer platforms while the mission staff will be sending out a daily E-newsletter that you can subscribe to, posting to social media and uploading photo galleries daily.
The 2017 Games will also feature live webcasting of every single sport event from every venue for the first time and more than 40 hours of broadcast coverage. You can find out more about all these communication services at www.teampei.ca.
These, along with all the other local media outlets, who do such a great job of covering our teams, should keep all Islanders up-to-date on Team P.E.I. happenings while in Winnipeg.
One of the questions I often get is “What is your favourite Games memory?”
I could go through each set of Games and list a couple, but there is always that moment during the ceremonies, where I’m looking at all the teams dressed in their provincial colours while the host community is proudly showcasing their culture, stories and people, and I think to myself I’m a very lucky person to get to experience this.
On Thursday, the first group of the 231 athletes and 60 coaches and managers, who make up Team P.E.I., will be departing from the Charlottetown Airport en route to Winnipeg to participate in the Games.
These 50th set of Canada Games should offer a wonderful platform for them to enjoy experiences that will last a lifetime. Stay tuned to their results and stories.
Let’s go P.E.I. #TeamPEI2017.