Ottawa Sports Pages

ges

rts Pa Ottawa Spo

Ottawa Sports Pages Your Not-for-Profit Voice for Local Sport

OttawaSportsPages.ca

22-07-27

THE FINAL EDITION

Ottawa Sports Pages moves fully online, free weekly email newsletter to replace newspaper rts Pages

OttawaSportsPages ca

Ottawa Spo

HOME

LEVEL V

SPORT V

OTTAWA SPORTS PAGES NEWSLETTER

ADVERTISING

DONATE

ABOUT

CONTACT

ATHLETICS ELITE AMATEUR SPORT PARA SPORT

Josh Cassidy will carry Canadian flag after challenging journey to 2022 Commonwealth Games Hometown Heroes: Ontario Summer Indigenous Games come to town

OUR NEWS

Ottawa at the Canada Summer Games

Rebelles Wrap: Canada Reds Baseball Academy & Louis-Riel high school give local baseball a transformational lift with the launch of their Sports-Study collaboration

Griffin’s Growl: Thanks to OTF grant, Gloucester Lacrosse Association continues to offer safe and quality programming for kids

Yes, you’re looking at our website homepage above (though the top stories will have since changed by the time you get there). We’re looking forward to continuing to provide a spotlight for high school, university, community & elite amateur sport on OttawaSportsPages.ca where we deliver new stories every day. Come see us today! (And tomorrow, and the next day too...)

Letter to Ottawa Sports Pages readers, by Executive Director Dan Plouffe If you haven’t been following us online at OttawaSportsPages.ca, on social media, or receiving our free email newsletter, then you’ve surely noticed the Ottawa Sports Pages newspaper has been missing for all of 2022 so far.

Omicron KO’ed us for a bit, then we later made the difficult decision to stop printing our newspaper.

ges

ports Pa

Ottawa S

So hold on to that copy you’ve got in your hands, as it’s officially the last print edition of the Ottawa Sports Pages.

But more importantly – grab your phone, your tablet, your laptop or add a wifi port to your typewriter and go to our website at OttawaSportsPages.ca NOW! There, you’ll find even more local sports news stories than we could ever cram into our limited pages here.

Our organization definitely has mixed emotions about ending our print edition. It wasn’t an easy call, but we believe that moving fully online will ultimately allow us to better serve the local sports community.

We won’t pretend otherwise – this is definitely a bit heartbreaking for us. There’s no question that we’re gonna miss having the newspaper, and we know many loyal readers will be sad too.

COVID can definitely own a solid

share of the blame. I’m not sure we would have arrived at this point if not for what we’ve experienced the past 2+ years.

An important factor in the decision of course are the business realities faced by a sports industry that’s been hammered hard during the pandemic. In part, this is a move that should help ensure the ongoing sustainability of our not-forprofit organization.

We’ve battled hard to reach the

OttawaSportsPages ca

10-year mark, and community support for the Ottawa Sports Pages Fund will be crucial as we face our biggest challenge yet.

(You can help shine a light on local sport by contributing at OttawaSportsPages.ca/Donate – all online donations are eligible for a charitable tax receipt and will be matched by the Ottawa Community Foundation up to $5,000.)

LETTER continues Back Page

We’re saying goodbye to newsprint, but our tradition of providing a spotlight for local sport carries on! Read new stories on our website daily and sign up for our free email newsletter.

2

– OTTAWA HIGH SCHOOL BEST 2022 –

OttawaSportsPages.ca’s 2022 High School Best Series profiled some of the top student-athletes who graduated from local high schools this year and who are set to move on to next-level sport. The Series was presented by the Sports-Études Program at École secondaire publique Louis-Riel – the local leaders in combining athletic and academic excellence since 2005.Below you’ll find snippets of the 20 stories we featured in the Series – you can read the full versions of each article at:

OttawaSportsPages.ca/Ottawa-High-School-Best-2022 GLEBE, JOHN McCRAE PREFER ‘DOUBLE-DOUBLE’ WHEN NAMING SENIOR ATHLETES OF THE YEAR

ZACH SIKKA ‘AS BUSY AS POSSIBLE’ AND SUCCESSFUL IN GRADUATING YEAR AT ST. PAUL

SIR WIL’S TOP ATHLETE & NEW STEEPLECHASE CHAMP ELIZABETH VROOM CLEARS ALL HURDLES

PROVINCIAL SOCCER CHAMP LEAPS INTO STEEPLECHASE, BECOMES NATIONAL CHAMP

Imitating a long-time Canadian coffee tradition, Glebe Collegiate Institute and John McCrae Secondary School athletic officials couldn’t decide on only one senior girl and one senior boy for their top athlete, so they went the ‘doubledouble’ route in selecting their best of 2021-22.

Zach Sikka entered his final year at St. Paul High School with one intention – fill every single moment in his calendar with something related to the Golden Bears community. He certainly didn’t miss much and if he did, it was only because he didn’t have enough time to cram something else in.

Elizabeth Vroom was destined to be a steeplechase runner.

The recent Sir Wilfrid Laurier Secondary School graduate never thought about becoming a steeplechase runner in the past, but in reviewing all the evidence and piecing it together in the spring, it made total sense.

A dozen years in soccer – including many playing at the highest provincial level – served as an excellent launching pad for Elizabeth Vroom’s new athletic pursuit of steeplechase, where she’s quickly become a champion many times over. Of course, the fitness derived from soccer helped.

THANK YOU OTTAWA SPORTS PAGES PARTNERS! We are so grateful to have had the support of a number of Ottawa sports groups that have partnered with us for many years.

Without them, it would not have been possible for us to share over 6,000 stories on local high school, university, community and elite amateur sport that would

have otherwise stayed untold by other local media over the past 10+ years.

We look forward to continuing our collaborations in the digital world for many years ahead.

Thank you for all the work you do to create the vibrant local sports scene that we all love!

– OTTAWA HIGH SCHOOL BEST 2022 – CARUSI A VERSATILE STANDOUT AND UNEXPECTED BASKETBALL HERO IN HIS FINAL YEAR AT A.Y.

FUTURE CONCORDIA STINGER HAPPY YOUNGER SISTER WAS PART OF HER LAST YEAR AT HOLY T

JOINING LAVAL ROUGE ET OR ANOTHER BIG STROKE FOR WELL-TRAVELLED SWIMMER

LONGTIME OTTAWA TFC TEAMMATES TO CONTINUE SOCCER CAREERS WITH LOUISIANA TECH

Bryce Carusi was determined to make the absolute most of his final year at A.Y. Jackson Secondary School. Whether it was sports, academics or volunteering, Carusi achieved more in his Grade 12 year than he did in his first three years combined at the west-end high school.

In her Grade 12 year as a student/athlete – which included being named senior female Athlete of the Year at Holy Trinity, winning MVP awards in three sports, coaching several teams and sitting on the student council – one of Emma Liagridonis’s best moments involved a family member.

After growing up in the small town of Kapuskasing, Danika Éthier finished high school at Louis-Riel, while spending time training with Team Canada on the west coast. She”ll compete at the Jr. Pan Pacs this summer in Hawaii before joining the Université Laval Rouge et Or in Quebec City.

Riley Bonadie and Flavie Dubé have played competitive soccer together since the under-10 level. In a few months, they’ll head south to join the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs to keep their streak as teammates going and fulfill each of their own long-sought goals of playing NCAA soccer.

AFTER PANDEMIC & BROKEN FOOT AT WORLDS TRIALS, SWIMMER REGAN RATHWELL REBOUNDS

AFTER 10 YEARS TOGETHER, IT’LL BE A BITTERSWEET GOODBYE FOR COACH & NCAA-BOUND DIVER

GUARD JADEN KIRKWOOD NEPEAN RAIDER LUKE POSTHUMUS FOLLOWS FAMILY FOOTSTEPS INTO COMMITS TO NORTHEASTERN U, UNIVERSITY BASKETBALL BUT WHEN WILL HE START?

The family tradition of playing varsity basketball while attending university continues to thrive for the Kirkwood family of Ottawa. Jaden Kirkwood is becoming familiar with his new surroundings at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

When Luke Posthumus looks into his future, the end goal appears clear, promising and fulfilling. On May 7, the gifted Nepean Raiders U18 AAA player committed to attend Northeastern University, but the unanswered question is when he’ll officially walk onto the campus in Boston.

The one-year-delayed Summer Olympic Games were on the horizon for 2021 and Ottawa swimmer Regan Rathwell was in a rut – she wasn’t going any faster as a backstroke racer. The COVID-19 pandemic was all around and there were annoying, but necessary restrictions and mandates.

When Ottawa National Diving Club head coach Brennan Villemaire talks about the pride he feels in seeing all that Kathryn Grant has achieved, and the person she’s become, he gets a little choked up. He explains that he feels a bit like another parent to Grant, and she’s about to leave the nest.

‘THIS IS SUCCESS’: 5 OSU PLAYERS HEADED TO NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT CENTRE IN TORONTO

HEIDI KNOLL IS TURNING ORANGE, SET TO JOIN MANY PAST NEPEAN WILDCATS AT SYRACUSE U

ETHAN BOXALL AND NOAH FAHEY WALKING IN FATHERS’ FOOTSTEPS AT CARLETON FOOTBALL

VOLLEYBALL/TRACK & FIELD ATHLETE AUDREY GODDARD HAS PLENTY OF JUMP IN HER PURSUITS

The Ottawa South United Force under-15 girls have totally dominated their competition over the last three years, with only one defeat in that time period. Now, five of the team’s star players are taking their game to the next level and going to the Ontario Regional Excel Super Centre.

As a young girl who grew up near the Rideau Canal, Heidi Knoll spent countless hours every day each winter skating with her cousins, all hockey players. Neither of her siblings played the sport growing up, so it came as a surprise to her father when his seven-year-old daughter asked to play.

More than two decades ago, before Carleton Ravens football was shut down, Scott Boxall and Chris Fahey were teammates. Now, as the rebooted Ravens prepare for their ninth season since returning to the field, Carleton will once again see a Boxall and Fahey together on the gridiron.

Audrey Goddard loves to jump. Put her in a single lane on a track and she’ll fearlessly attack a sprint hurdle. Have her endure a fast trip around a 400-metre oval and clear multiple hurdles, she’ll do that, too. And you can also see her jumping ability as an elite volleyball player.

OTTAWA ELITE’S SHERIDAN KEEN, GRACE TONGUE WIN MAJOR JUEL BASKETBALL AWARDS

ALIZÉ LEMIEUX OFF TO FLORIDA AS OTTAWA’S FIRST NCAA BEACH VOLLEYBALL STUDENT-ATHLETE

ORLÉANS BASKETBALL PHENOM REAPING REWARDS OF LIFELONG DEDICATION TO HIS GAME

ROYAL OTTAWA’S JAMES NEWTON COMMITS TO RUTGERS U, NAMED TO NATIONAL JUNIOR GOLF TEAM

When Ottawa Elite basketball players Sheridan Keen and Grace Tongue are immersed in a game, they are focused and energized about their multiple assignments. Keen and Tongue both received a major award from the JUEL league reflecting their skills on and off the court.

Alizé Lemieux had the family vacation of a lifetime in 2019.

After experiencing all the sights and sounds of Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, she travelled 200 kilometres south to the Altitude Academy to attend a one-week beach volleyball camp.

Merrick Palmer remembers the day a small 11-yearold boy with light skin and a big blonde afro entered his Orléans gym for drop-in basketball training. Palmer, who runs Capital Courts Training Centre, was immediately drawn to Brayden O’Connor, now set to leap into the NCAA.

Golfer James Newton is at the top of his game. The Royal Ottawa Golf Club junior had many choices, but on Nov. 10 he signed his National Letter of Intent to attend Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, and become a member of the Scarlet Knights men’s golf team.

THANK YOU TO ALL OUR DEVOTED OTTAWA SPORTS PAGES ADVERTISING AND CAMPS PROJECT PARTNERS!

3

6

– OTTAWA AT THE CANADA SUMMER GAMES –

Many rising Ottawa athletes will be competing at the 2022 Canada Summer Games in Niagara Region from Aug. 6-21. You can follow our coverage of their journeys on our Ottawa at the Canada Summer Games central webpage and sign up for our free CSG Daily Newsletter at:

OttawaSportsPages.ca/Ottawa-at-the-2022-Canada-Summer-Games/ Our Ottawa at the Canada Summer Games coverage is presented by City of Ottawa Sports Commissioner Mathieu Fleury, a huge supporter of our Ottawa’s sports community.

The Ottawa Sports Pages’ news team will be onsite in Niagara Region to cover the action, and we’ll be sending recaps, previews and profiles to your inbox each morning throughout the Aug. 6-21 Games.

In the two weeks leading up to the start of the Games, OttawaSportsPages.ca will be profiling some of the participating local athletes. Take a look at the story on the next page to get a taste of what we’ve got in store.

ABOUT THE CANADA GAMES More than 5,000 participants (including athletes, coaches and support staff) will at-

tend the Games to represent their provinces in 18 different sports, including an anticipated 40+ athletes from Ottawa.

The age categories vary by sport, but generally speaking, Canada Games athletes are in their late teenage years or early 20s.

The Canada Games often serve as a stepping stone to senior-level games – roughly two-thirds of Canadian Olympians competed

at Canada Games before making it to sport’s biggest stage.

We are so incredibly excited to provide the spotlight for these local young rising athletes as we did for our Olympians and Paralympians during the recent Tokyo and Beijing Games. Sign up for our Ottawa at the Canada Summer Games Daily Newsletter via our website at OttawaSportsPages.ca .

Team Ontario’s rosters have not been finalized in all sports as of press time, but here are some of the local athletes we’ll be keeping an eye on at Niagara 2022:

ATHLETICS David Adeleye Eliezer Adjibi Brett Babcock Thomas Becker Madison Mclean David Moulongou Tom Nedow Luca Nicoletti Doyin Ogunremi Leo Wallner BASKETBALL Achol Akot Catrina Garvey

BOX LACROSSE Julien Belair Tristan Caldwell Hunter Lubiniecki Tristan Thompson CANOE-KAYAK Maren Bradley Peter Bradley Ydris Hunter Matt O’Neill Janina Winnicki Amelia Wojtyk Zoe Wojtyk

CYCLING Lucy Hempstead Alexander Woodford DIVING Audrée Howes ROWING Aidan Hembruff RUGBY SEVENS Rachel Cullum

SOCCER Sofia Cortes-Browne Maya Galko Jason Hartill Rosa Maalouf Teegan Melenhorst SWIMMING Julie Brousseau Grace Lu Preston McMann Olivier Risk Gael Shindano Katie Xu

TENNIS Anna-Raphaëlle Serghi Ray Xie VOLLEYBALL Devin Cooney Miguel Dumetz Audrey Goddard Nathan Peters Victoria Potvin WRESTLING Lilah Fraser Kai Harada Laila Seed-Desai

– OTTAWA AT THE CANADA SUMMER GAMES –

7

Tristan Thompson revved up for women’s debut of national summer sport at national Games

By Mark Colley The last time lacrosse was featured at the Canada Summer Games was 1985.

New Coke had just been introduced, the first version of Windows came out and Michael Jordan was the NBA’s Rookie of the Year.

Now, 37 years later, the event is coming back at the Canada Summer Games in Niagara from Aug. 6 to 21. It will also be the first time in the Games’ history that women’s lacrosse is played.

Tristan Thompson, a 15-year-old student at St. Mark Catholic High School in Manotick, will be part of the groundbreaking girls bringing renewed life to the sport.

“It’s an opportunity of a lifetime,” Thompson said in an interview with the Ottawa Sports Pages. “I think all the provinces have a lot riding on our backs.”

Thompson plays field lacrosse with her school, where her team made it to OFSAA and finished seventh. She also plays box lacrosse for both the Gloucester Griffins and Nepean Knights, who she switches between because there’s often not enough girls to form one team at a certain level.

Playing for the Knights’ U22 team at 15 years old – which makes her the youngest on the roster by at least two years, she said – Thompson described the environment as “very welcoming.”

“Everybody treats me as if I were their age,” Thompson said. “The lacrosse community itself, especially the Nepean Knights, [was] very welcoming when I first started.”

Thompson also plays U22 hockey with the Nepean Wildcats. Hockey was her first sport, as it was for her brother, who played rec league hockey. But six years ago, when her brother started playing lacrosse, she decided

photo: mark colley

Local lacrosse players and Canada Summer Games competitors Tristan Caldwell (left) and Tristan Thompson (centre) pose with the flame during the 2022 Canada Summer Games torch-lighting ceremony on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ont. on Monday, June 6, 2022. to try it and fell in love with the sport, although she said she likes hockey and lacrosse equally.

Thompson, along with 17-year-old Tristan Caldwell, who also attends St. Mark, were chosen by Team Ontario to light the Canada Summer Games torch in June at the Centennial Flame at Parliament Hill. She said the event was her first time being interviewed.

“You see it on TV, you see all these torch lightings, all these huge ceremonies and you always wish to be in that position,” Thompson said. “It’s a little stressful, because I was hoping I actually lit the wick.”

Caldwell is competing in men’s lacrosse at the Games, but is a three-sport athlete.

In May, he was selected 11th overall in the Ontario Hockey League U18 draft by the Owen Sound Attack, and he also won a championship with his high school football team.

Ottawa athletes Hunter Lubiniecki and Julien Belair, both of whom compete with the Gloucester Griffins, were also named to the Team Ontario preliminary men’s lacrosse roster. The longlist of 24 athletes will be reduced to 18 ahead of the Games.

As the Games near, Thompson said she

was most looking forward to meeting athletes from other provinces.

“Compared to [lacrosse] nationals, there’s way more provinces that are participating,” Thompson said. “The competition, the atmosphere – I’ve been told it’s kind of like the Olympic village.”

Visit OttawaSportsPages.ca to read more stories like this in our Ottawa at the Canada Summer Games Pre-Games Profile Series, presented by City of Ottawa Sports Commissioner Mathieu Fleury.

LET’S GO TEAM ONTARIO! A number of our local elected officials are excited to share their congrats and best wishes to our Ottawa athletes competing for Team Ontario at the Niagara 2022 Canada Summer Games.

They’ll each be presenting a day of the Ottawa Sports Pages’ coverage during the Aug. 6-21 Games.

Thank you very much to our representatives for your support of our publication and local sport!

MP Chandra Arya Nepean

Hon. David McGuinty Ottawa South

MP Yasir Naqvi Ottawa Centre

MPP Lucille Collard Ottawa-Vanier

Coun. Tim Tierney Beacon Hill-Cyrville

Coun. Cathy Curry Kanata North

Coun. Scott Moffatt Rideau-Goulbourn

Coun. Mathieu Fleury Rideau-Vanier

LETTER TO OUR READERS: Thank you for reading our 100 print newspaper editions – see you on the web! continued from Front Page When the staffing shortages created by Omicron forced us to cancel our first planned print editions of this year, it also led us to reevaluate our priorities. We are a small team at the Sports Pages, and it was truly an epic task for us to produce each edition of our newspaper.

We’ll now be able to redirect our efforts into delivering more frequent and timely news on our website and in our weekly newsletter, instead of focusing most of our energy solely on producing newspapers every couple months.

We’ll also be able to better highlight advertisers to our digital audience – which has almost quadrupled

in size compared to 2020 – thanks to our revamped partnership packages, with more services under development.

And we hope that you, like us, will be heartened to have the Ottawa Sports Pages name – and our tradition of providing a spotlight for local sport – carry on with our free email newsletter (you can sign up at OttawaSportsPages.ca to get it).

It’s been such an honour to tell over 6,000 stories on local high school, university, community and elite amateur sport in the newspapers we printed from 2011 to 2021.

We’re gonna be a bit liberal and count our April 2020 “e-paper” (which didn’t end up hitting the presses when COVID first hit) so we

can call this the 100th edition of the Ottawa Sports Pages.

Take a look at our centre spread on page 4-5 of all the newspaper covers for a little trip down memory lane (or yup, you can read the full versions online too).

We are so proud of all those newspapers and the void they filled in media coverage of local sport, but our work to shine a light on the Ottawa amateur sports scene won’t stop at all.

In this issue, you’ll find snippets of a couple of the bigger projects we’ve had on our website. The 2022 Ottawa High School Best Series ran in June and July as we tipped our caps to some of the top local graduating student-athletes.

And (as of press time), we’ve

just kicked off our Ottawa at the Canada Summer Games Series of pre-Games profiles on some of the athletes set to compete at the national multi-sport event in Niagara.

Once the Games begin, we’ll be sending out our Ottawa at the Canada Summer Games Daily Newsletter throughout the Aug. 6-21 Games to share recaps, previews and profiles on our local participants.

Our news team will be onsite in Niagara to cover the Games, and we are super excited to be able to provide the same kind of spotlight for these young rising athletes as we did for our local Olympians/ Paralympians during the Tokyo and Beijing Games.

And don’t forget: Ottawa sports

reporting veteran Martin Cleary’s High Achievers column continues to appear every weekday on OttawaSportsPages.ca as well.

Martin of course has covered the local amateur sports scene for 49 years, with the Ottawa Citizen for the bulk of it, and he’s developped a large following on his @ MartinCleary Twitter feed.

So that clinches it – we know you can come find us online too.

Lastly, we want to THANK YOU, readers, as well as our partners and all our friends in the local sports community, for your continued support as we begin this new chapter!

Your comments, questions and ideas are welcome by email at ExecDir@OttawaSportsPages.ca .

— Dan Plouffe, Executive Director