Imagine, little has changed in 20 years
In fact, it could be argued we’ve regressed instead of progressed in the sports venue
“No question Newfoundland has some distinct disadvantages. As a result, we have to work that much harder than the other provinces if we hope to close the gap.
“We can continue to attend Canada Games and be the nice, little, enthusiastic Newfoundland team … lovable, salt-of-the-earth losers. Or we can change.
“Enough with the ninth- and 10th-place finishes. “Losing sucks.
“Let’s do something about it.”
I scribbled that almost 20 years ago to the day — Aug. 23, 1997 — following the Brandon Canada Summer Games. Newfoundland won four medals that year, a haul in comparison to the province’s second, and most recent, visit back to Manitoba.
Four years after Brandon, at the 2001 London, Ont. Summer Games, Newfoundland and Labrador bagged eight medals. But it’s been downhill since in the four subsequent Summer Games — seven, six, two and a paltry single medal in the Winnipeg Games that finished last weekend.
And you know what? Nothing’s changed.
Our facilities, in comparison to those in Halifax and everywhere else westward, are laughable. Rather than progressing, we are, in terms of sports, regressing. There’s still no government support for athletes, and attitudes toward sport — indifference coupled with patronizing, bordering on ignorant — remain unchanged.
“Medals are great,” wrote one Twitter user — a Twit, no doubt — “but they can’t take the place of the experience, friendships and memories these young athletes will cherish forever.”
That’s right, everyone, winning isn’t everything. Hold hands, share stories, make memories and get hammered on the playing field.
Ontario’s credo, no doubt. If this was a perfect world, St. John’s would be home to an indoor complex twice the size of Techniplex, a track circling a Field Turf infield, one outfitted with equipment such as batting cages and pitching mounds for the baseball and softball teams, soccer nets, scrum machines for the rugby players, hurdles for the hurdlers, a building complete with weight and cardio rooms, and video/meeting rooms, to boot.
If we want our imagination to run completely free, it would
be attached to a 50-metre swimming pool.
The complex would be used primarily for high performance athletics, not birthday parties.
But we won’t see such a facility, regrettably. Didn’t happen when the province’s cash taps were open 10 years ago, and it’s not about to now.
Bren Kelly, the chap who ran across Canada to promote the 1977 Canada Summer Games in St. John’s — otherwise known as the Best Goalie Monday Night Hockey Ever Produced — was back in the city recently and tells me he is mystified St. John’s, the capital city, has to rely on Mount Pearl to train its track athletes.
A city this size, in other words, has no track.
But it gets better. St. John’s also doesn’t own a rink, not counting Mile One, and who knows what to classify that as anymore.
The carelessness towards sports and recreation is unmistakable, making the banal statements from government members all the more galling.
“The athletes (at the recent Canada Games),” trumpeted Lisa Dempster, the minister responsible for sport in whatever department they call it now, “were great ambassadors for the province and have likely been inspired to maintain the values of healthy active living that are inherent in sport participation as they move on to the next stages of their sporting lives.”
Quick, someone get me a bucket.
So what to do? Pack it in? Fold the tent? Continue pretending we’re on the same playing field as Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, when, in fact, we can’t get past P.E.I.? Glad you asked.
Try these suggestions on for size: • Invest more in coaching. Not
just run more people through more courses, but rather have
the best coaches, the people who really, truly understand and can read the game, coach our coaches. Coaching is paramount, and if it means getting people in, do it.
People like Pat Parfrey, Alan Ross, John Drinkwater and Howie Meeker, back in the day, were difference-makers as coaches.
That’s the difference. • Make better use of the facilities we currently have. School gyms are locked up in the summer, and on many evenings during the school year. Why, when sports are scrambling to find gym time? These schools and gymnasiums belong to the people of the province. So here’s what you do, if you’re the government member responsible for sport: you toddle on down the hall and meet with your colleague who is the head of education, and you have him inform the school boards to open the gyms to sports user groups.
End of.
There’s an old saying that common sense is not always so common. Which brings us to Memorial University.
Many times, sports cannot avail of facilities through no fault of their own. Over at the university, where a board, and not the athletics department, runs the Field House and Aquarena, I’m told the Sea-hawks’ track team receives only of a handful of hours per week on the track in the Field House because they, in part, interfere with walkers paying their couple of dollars to stroll around.
Same thing happens all the time at the University of Toronto and UBC, no doubt.
Seriously, you can’t make this up. • There needs to be a change
in attitude. Losing has become acceptable. It was muttered by someone in Winnipeg, “Aren’t they angry to be coming last?
Aren’t they saying to themselves, ‘I want to be out there in the A final, and not stuck in the B final?’”
The lack of accountability is mystifying, perhaps reinforced with the absurd notion the Games are about making friends and memories.
This is Canada Games, and, yes, while that is no small part and parcel of the experience, this is an athletic competition, and you play sports to win.
Unless it’s Little League or peewee hockey. • Conditioning. Newfoundland and Labrador has to have the best conditioned athletes in Canada.
No excuses. • Cut sports from the Canada
Games program if improvement isn’t shown. If there’s a pattern of ninth- and 10th-place finishes every four years, perhaps it’s time to have the sport take a seat, have its (paltry as it is) funding revoked and given to a sport that is showing promise.
It may sound like a Sovietstyle strategy, but make no mistake: the Ontarios and Quebecs of the world fund their sports according to performance. • Newfoundland and Labrador will never be a sporting power on the athletic map. Our population makes it impossible.
But that’s not to suggest we should then be complacent. If we’re serious about sports — and that’s a big “if” — measures have to be taken.
What we have now is not working. Not even close.
Playing second fiddle to P.E.I., and serving as doormats to other provinces, isn’t good enough.
Now let’s see if someone is repeating those words 20 years from now.