We’ve got fun and games

RANDOM SPORTS THOUGHTS

Albion Boxing Club fighter Matt Fraser was due to box for a bronze medal Wednesday at the Canada Games in Red Deer, Alta. Fraser won his first fight, but lost his second one in a close bout with an opponent from Alberta (cough *fixed* cough).

I’m just kidding about that; the match probably wasn’t rigged – that would never happen in boxing at the Canada Games. Just ask Westville’s Aaron Kinch.

But, whatever.

Fraser won his third match to earn a shot at a bronze medal, and while the 17-year-old wanted to come home with nothing short of gold, it doesn’t always go your way in sports. Sometimes, you get the bear and sometimes, the bear gets you.

Pictou County is sending three figure skaters to the Canada Games. Brooke Pennington, Cameron Boulter and Jailyn Elliott, all of whom skate with the Mariposa East program, will leave Saturday for what should be an awesome experience for those young athletes. Figure skaters, similar to boxers, spend hours upon hours training, for just a few short minutes of actual competition.

Although the Northern AAA Subway Selects female hockey team was obviously better than their opponent (East Hants Penguins) in the first two games of their playoff series this past weekend, the Penguins’ goaltender was really good. The Selects fired 70 shots at her in Game 1 of the series, and she only allowed seven pucks to get past her. That’s some pretty solid minding of the net.

Game 2 was an 8-0 result, by the way. The Selects, who are the defending Atlantic champions, are just faster, crisper and simply a better team by a country mile.

The best part about making $300 million to play baseball in San Diego for 10 years, aside from the $300 million Manny Machado is getting from the Padres?

You get to play baseball in San Diego, where it’s always sunny, and around 24 degrees Celsius, with a nice breeze drifting in off the Pacific. I could do without the month of February – I just walked in from outside where it felt like I was living in the Arctic.

I hate you, Manny Machado.

NON-SPORTS THOUGHTS OF THE WEEK

They should Make Ontario Great Again and kick premier Doug Ford out of the province (just send him west, not east). The voting public never ceases to amaze. The guy is worse than his brother, and that’s saying something.

RCMP have charged a Pictou County man with animal cruelty, and boy, is he ever hearing about it through the always-civilized and reasonable social media.

Calls for violence against the accused – Facebook is just terrific, isn’t it? – are more than a little over the top (although I completely understand the sentiment), but the thing is, people have deep emotional attachments to animals, especially ones who depend on people to care for them.

If you beat up your next-door neighbour because you guys were drinking and started arguing about golf, people probably won’t care that much (although they probably wouldn’t want to have a beer with you anytime soon, or at the very least, talk about golf).

But if you intentionally harm your dog, cat or bird, those same people are going to want you swinging from a tall pine tree.

To most people, pets are family members, innocent, only wanting love and a full food dish, and I know folks who’d swear on a stack of Bibles that they like animals more than they like people.