Highs, lows and loaded with promise
Stars of the present and future provided drama for fans
As the year draws to a close, here are the Times Colonist's picks for the top 10 Island sports stories of 2017, listed in no particular order: ’94 REDUX? NOT: Hosting a major international multi-sport Games is usually a once-in-alifetime event for a community. So when events conspired to place Victoria back in the headlines this year regarding the 2022 Commonwealth Games, after original host Durban, South Africa, was stripped of those Games in March, it seemed almost surreal for a city that never thought it would be going through that process again after 1994. In the end, the B.C. government said it had other priorities and couldn’t support Victoria’s nascent 2022 bid, pretty much killing it then and there. The 2022 Commonwealth Games replacement city for Durban was announced this month as Birmingham, which had been the favourite with English-rival Liverpool. ICED: The referendum to build an $80-million arena in Nanaimo was roundly rejected in March by 80 per cent of the vote. With a new rink would have come another Western Hockey League team to the Island, rumoured to be the Kootenay Ice, to join the Victoria Royals. Kootenay has missed the playoffs for the past two years, with respective season win totals of only 12 and 14, leaving some wags to suggest discerning Nanaimoites must really hate the Ice. The underlying issues in the referendum, however, ran deeper than just hockey. MARATHON MEN: If you must lose, you might as well make it in epic, record-shattering fashion. That’s what the Victoria Royals did in April at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre in setting the standard for the longest game played in WHL and Canadian Hockey League history. The Everett Silvertips eliminated the Royals in Game 6 of their WHL playoff series in the fifth overtime period after 151 minutes and 36 seconds of game time. The players were physically drained. None more so than the goaltenders as Victoria’s Griffen Outhouse faced 75 shots and Everett’s Carter Hart 66. Royals fans, most of whom stayed to the end, clocked five hours and 49 minutes in the building. Luckily, it was a matinée, which began at 2 p.m., and ended just before 8 p.m. FAREWELL THE COACH: Dave Lowry left Victoria in May as the all-time winningest coach in Royals franchise history with a regular-season record of 199-112-22. The Royals never missed the playoffs under Lowry’s watch. The now Los Angeles Kings assistant coach was twice named WHL coach of the year during his five-season Royals tenure and was also assistant coach and head coach of Canada’s national junior team during that span. CLOSE CALLS: The Victoria HarbourCats of the West Coast League of baseball, Victoria Shamrocks of the Western Lacrosse Association and Westshore Rebels of the B.C. Junior Football Conference all made it to their league playoff finals, but lost. The HarbourCats went down to the Corvallis Knights and Shamrocks to the New Westminster Salmonbellies. But it was still a win for the Island in the BCFC final as the Vancouver Island Raiders defeated the Rebels in their bitter derby. SNOW STORM: Island Olympians have been best known in the Summer Games. But put away those Speedos, mountain bikes and rugby balls. This year saw the emergence of a group of freestylers from Mount Washington who will be heard from in the Games of snow and ice. Spencer O’Brien of Courtenay and Cassie Sharpe of Comox capped 2017 on the slopes with golds this month in slopestyle and ski half-pipe, respectively, in Colorado, to put themselves in strong positions for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. So did Darcy Sharpe of Comox, who won silver in the first men’s slopestyle World Cup event of the season in September at Cardrona, New Zealand, where sister Cassie won gold. The Sharpes and O’Brien are among a group of Island athletes who grew up skiing and snowboarding on Mount Washington and are looking to Pyeongchang. It includes ski freestyler Teale Harle of Campbell River, who recorded his first career World Cup victory in March at Silvaplana, Switzerland, and Canadian national team members Carle Brenneman and Mathieu Leduc, both from the Comox Valley, in snowboard-cross and ski-cross, respectively.
STAR STRUCK: Speaking of the Summer and Winter Olympics, Island sports fans in 2017 watched both Pyeongchang 2018 and Tokyo 2020 unfold in front of their eyes as they watched the likes of Kaetlyn Osmond, Tessa Virtue, Scott Moir, Patrick Chan, Eric Radford and Meagan Duhamel in Stars on Ice in May at the Memorial Centre, Penny Oleksiak at the Canadian swim trials in April at Saanich Commonwealth Place and rugby Olympians aplenty on the pitch at the women’s Canada Sevens in May at Westhills Stadium.
RUGBY BLUES: Many of the Island sports headlines in 2017 concerned the continued decline of the Langford-based Canadian men’s rugby team, especially the decisive loss over the summer to the United States in the first qualifier for the 2019 World Cup in Japan, relegating Canada for the first time in its history to the upcoming backdoor qualifiers.
RAPTORS RAPTURE: The Toronto Raptors showed why, as with baseball’s Blue Jays, they are considered to be “Canada’s team” when they were treated to a rapturous welcome at their 2017-18 NBA training camp held at CARSA Gym on the University of Victoria campus in the fall.
PREP POWERHOUSES: A couple of Island high-school dynasties continued unabated in 2017 as the Oak Bay Bays captured their 12th B.C. track and field title in 16 years and the Shawnigan Lake School Stags won their eighth B.C. high school rugby championship in nine years. cdheensaw@timescolonist.com