CHILLIWACK TIMES TUESDAY, MAY 11, 2010 B03
2010 Chilliwack Community Sport Hero Awards
Keeping the game alive T
odd Morrison started playing fastpitch more than 20 years ago, and he doesn’t plan to quit any time soon. “I want to play as long as I can,” he said, “probably until they cart me off on a stretcher or have to wheel me out to home plate to catch.” Although Morrison has dedicated a good part of his adult life to playing and coaching fastpitch, his first sports as a kid growing up in Victoria were soccer and lacrosse. He might never have taken to the ball diamond if his knees had held out, but when he was eight years old, a doctor told him he would have to quit lacrosse if he didn’t want to get his knees drained every year. His switch to baseball the following year wasn’t a popular one with his soccer- and rugby-playing dad. “He actually called it a wimpy sport,” said Morrison with a laugh, “but after I started to play it, he became a really big fan.” Morrison switched to fastpitch
when he was 17. With shorter distances between the bases, and between the pitcher and home plate, Morrison was drawn to the game’s pace. “It’s just a quicker game,” he said. “I like the fact that you’re always in the game. It doesn’t matter what position you play.” He played in Victoria until he was 21, and then moved to Chilliwack hoping to join an Abbotsford senior A team—Fast as Flite. The team was one of several high-calibre teams he played for during his career, the most recent being the Vancouver Grey Sox, a team he also helped coach after he retired Morrison’s coaching career first started when he met his wife. She was playing ball with a local women’s team, the Valley Cats, and he was eager to pass on some of the know-how imparted to him by some of his great coaches. “For me it’s another way to be still in the game, involved with the game,” he said.
His time with the Valley Cats ended last year after 15 seasons and two provincial championship titles. Another example of Morrison putting his high-level fastpitch experience to work for Chilliwack happened two years ago when he brought the Grey Sox to Chilliwack to run a clinic for minor girls and boys. For Morrison, it’s all part of keeping the game he loves going in the city. When he moved here in 1990, softball was thriving with three divisions of men’s ball, two church divisions and an 11-team women’s league. Now there is only one men’s team and five women’s teams left, something Morrison chalks up to the growing profile of baseball in the area and the decision of the International Olympic Committee to drop softball from the Games. “It’s been such a good game,” he said. “I just hope all the coaches that are putting in their time and helping develop the game are rewarded at the end of the day with the game still being alive.”
Todd Morrison is doing all he can to keep the game of fastpitch alive and well here in the Fraser Valley.
Short track, long history
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rowing up in southwestern Ontario, near Windsor, Ken St. Louis spent his fair share of time on skates. “There was a lot of ice there in the winter time,” he said with a laugh, remembering many hours spent skating on the open lakes back east. He’d seen all kinds of skating on TV too, but it wasn’t until 1992, when he was in his 30s, that he got his first live glimpse of short track. “I was just blow away by it,” he said. “I couldn’t believe the speed in such close proximity.” St. Louis was a fan of fast-paced sports. When he was in Grade 10, he traded in all the mainstream sports he’d been playing like baseball, football, basketball and hockey to commit five years to competitive European handball —a sport introduced into his school by a Danish teacher who’d grown up with the sport in his home country.
St. Louis’s introduction to short track came years later, after he had moved to Chilliwack and started a young family. He came to the rink because a friend had asked him to help out as a timer at the North American championships being held here that year. Impressed as he was by his first taste of the sport, he didn’t get involved with the Sardis Fliers Speed Skating Club until he signed up his son, Kelsey, for their learnto-skate program a few years later. Kelsey took to it right away, and it wasn’t long before his daughter Kayla was racing too. St. Louis and his wife Kandyce, in the meantime, fell in love with the family atmosphere at the rink and soon dove into active roles with the club. “It wasn’t a drop-and-go sport where you drop the kids and leave,” he said. “You stuck around
and were a part of it.” Of the 15 years he’s been with the club, St. Louis has spent close to 10 years as president and volunteered countless hours organizing the club’s annual relay challenge, timing at most of the competitions in B.C. and working on equipment. Watching his own kids race at the provincial and national levels gave St. Louis plenty of motivation to stay involved, but even now—after both Kelsey and Kayla have retired—he’s still behind the scenes as bingo co-ordinator, keeping the club’s main source of revenue flowing smoothly and the sport affordable so more kids can get involved. “When I see those young kids go out there for the first time, I just feel happy watching,” he said. “It’s that good feeling you get when you figure there’s a part of this that keeps happening because of your involvement.”
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Ken St. Louis gets a good feeling from knowing he is helping the short track speed skating community.
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