Sports world needs to continue to keep grinding

Motivation gets tougher as COVID-19 pandemic continues

A Prince Albert Raiders goal celebration from May 2019.

“Trust the process.”

For the majority of the sports world seemingly all over the world, that tried and true cliché seems to get harder and harder to follow.

As February of 2021 starts today, North America is just a short time away from observing the one-year anniversary of falling into the grips of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. In North America, the various shutdowns, restrictions and lockdowns had their start on March 11, 2020 when the NBA elected that day to pause its 2019-20 season.

That started the domino effect of various shutdowns, restrictions and lockdowns that continue to this day. Different parts of the world have already or are about to experience their respective one-year anniversaries of falling in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic between now and March 11, 2021.

In Canada, it seems all the sports world can do is keep plugging along with plans to play or resume action. Administrators and staffers will have to continue to keep drawing up and redrawing up plans to get back into action.

Coaches have to keep doing their best to plan for whatever a season may look like.

Athletes have to keep training attempting to prepare like a season could be around the corner.

Here in Saskatchewan at the moment, groups of athletes can practice in a team environment limited to groups of eight, if they are age 18 or under.

The Prince Albert Northern Bears last played Nov. 21, 2020.

The rest have to do their best to continue training individually to keep up their conditioning.

As the pandemic keeps dragging on, the longer the sports world goes without the return of regular competitions it gets harder and harder to keep the motivation up to continue on.

At this point in time in Canada if you are involved in sports in any way, you have likely asked yourself, “Why do I keep doing this?”

That goes for administrators, staffers, coaches and athletes across the board including if you play minor sports at the novice level, at the highest level in an age group or are playing in elite leagues like the WHL, CJFL, WWCFL, U Sports and the CFL.

As seasons keep getting pushed back and events get cancelled, you start to wonder what the point is.

In some circuits like the SFU18AAAHL, the SMAAAHL and the SJHL, teams got to experience regular season game action for a short time only to have the rug pulled out from under them. All of those circuits haven’t seen the ice for competitive games since late November 2020.

For the high performance athletes in Canada, you hit the point where you are lost.

These days once you reach Grade 9, high performance athletes in Canada mostly specialize in only one sport of choice.

About 20 years ago, that was the last era where top level athletes might play three or four sports throughout the year at a high level. Shortly after that point, year round sports specific training took off.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders last player in November of 2019.

Most in the general public believe the era from 20 years ago still exists, but that is far from the case.

High performance athletes commit to their sports like year-round 40-hour a week jobs. It does become a lifestyle.

As a result of this singular focus, high performance athletes don’t really dabble in other interests. You don’t pick up interests like playing musical instruments like a guitar, doing photography, dabbling in various artistic pursuits or even following a series on television.

When games and sport aren’t there, it does leave a hole and effects mental health.

Of course, there was optimism in December of 2020 when news arrived that vaccines were going to be rolled out for COVID-19. With that said, vaccine rollout takes time, and judging by the stories from mainstream media outlets, there appears to be some rollout delays as far as Canada is concerned.

There are stories of new variants of COVID-19, which adds another hurdle in the pandemic situation.

Like in society, the sports community has been wedged due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

You have people who believe playing sports outweighs the needs of the pandemic. You have others who believe the needs of the pandemic outweigh playing sports.

A third group also believes you have to put your best foot forward to get the sports world back into action, but if the health officials say you can’t go, you respect and follow the decisions of the health officials.

Outdoor sports like softball motored in Sask. in 2020.

Of course, some that are in the group that believe playing sports outweighs the needs of the pandemic get testy with people in the other two groups.

Patience is in short supply, but is it something that is needed.

 It is known that the virus does transmit easily, which is a big fear as far as health officials go. 

Worries of filling hospitals too fast continue to be there.

In the sports world, it seems as far as Saskatchewan was concerned that sports that were played outside in summer and fall weren’t as disrupted as when everything moved indoors when winter hit.

In summer, there was a panic if Saskatchewan hit 300 active cases. 

On Sunday, there were 2,534 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, and there have been many days over the past two months where the active case count was over 3,000.

There is also still a real worry that COVID-19 is a “gain of function” experiment gone wrong. That theory has never been fully discounted.

In a “gain of function” experiment, a researcher takes a virus and makes it a superbug in a lab. The researcher proceeds to develop medical defences against this superbug.

It is viewed this type of research keeps humans one step ahead of nature. There are critics against this type of research, who often ask what happens if one of these superbugs escapes the lab?

Chase Wouters plays for the Saskatoon Blades on March 6, 2020.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology lab in the Jiangxia District, Wuhan, in China’s central Hubei province was working on “gain of function” type experiments. It is speculated COVID-19 escaped the lab in Wuhan, but it is highly likely the truth might never come out on that front.

That theory does help make all the shutdowns, restrictions and lockdowns that have happened around the world make sense.

For anyone involved in the sports world, all you can do is focus on controlling what you can control and administrators, staffers, coaches and athletes are all in the same boat.

All you can do is continue to put your best foot forward each day, have patience and “trust the process.”

Words of wisdom from Huskies’ Piok

Yol Piok in action for the Huskies in 2019.

Yol Piok, who is a sure handed receiver with the University of Saskatchewan Huskies football team, shared some pretty good words of wisdom on Bell Let’s Talk day this past Thursday.

Piok, who has used up four seasons of U Sports eligibility with the Huskies, has had his battle with mental health over the years dealing with severe anxiety.

The graduate of Regina’s Archbishop M.C. O’Neill High School has made huge strides in his mental health journey over the years. He has become an ambassador when it comes to speaking on the subject.

He put together a great video message that was just under one minute in length that was shared on all the Huskies social media channels. In a calming way, he talked patience as well as saying other calming words.

The video, which is below, is a good one to reflect on as time marches on.

📢 An important message that we all could use courtesy of @ypiok81 from @skhuskies. #BellLetsTalk pic.twitter.com/FLLWgloMn0

— Huskie Athletics (@HuskieAthletics) January 28, 2021

If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

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Sask. sports community dodges COVID-19 bullet, for now

The Prince Albert Mintos and Saskatoon Contacts can keep playing.

In Saskatchewan, the games will go on.

The question remains for how long?

On Thursday, new restrictions became active in Manitoba to battle the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and those restrictions are slated at the moment to last four weeks. Recreational centres have to remain closed in the province during those restrictions bringing sports in Manitoba to a halt.

On Friday, Alberta added new restrictions to battle the COVID-19 pandemic that are slated to last two weeks at the moment.

Alberta suspended indoor fitness programs and team sports. Sports restrictions are specifically for recreational teams or group activities that occur indoors. Outdoor sports are not affected and neither are individual sports or exercise.

Junior, collegiate, university and professional sports are also exempted.

Those restrictions have caused the slowdown in that province’s sports scene.

At 11:30 a.m. on Friday, the Government of Saskatchewan held a press conference to introduce new restrictions. You can bet the sports community in Saskatchewan was wondering if there would be any clamp downs in the sports scene.

During that press conference, it was announced new restrictions were coming in Monday and would remain in place for 28 days.

A mandatory indoor mask rule that was already in place for Regina, Saskatoon and Prince Albert was expanded to all communities with populations over 5,000.

The Saskatoon Stars can stay in action.

Communities that surround Regina, Saskatoon and Prince Albert are included in the mask mandate, even if their populations are less than 5,000.

Licensed liquor establishments will have to stop serving alcohol at 10 p.m. and consumption must end by 11 p.m.

The use of hookah and water pipes in lounges won’t be allowed.

Gyms and fitness centres can stay open, but group aerobic classes are limited to eight people, and they must maintain at least three metres of distance between each other.

Saskatchewan high schools with at least 600 students were recommended to move to level three of the province’s Safe Schools plan. The amount of in class learning is reduced at that level.

At the press conference, Saskatchewan’s Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Saqib Shahab said the government has considered sports restrictions, and some could come next week.

It was noted the spread of COVID-19 during sports activities has been low risk unless someone is participating who is sick. Shahab said virus transmission usually spreads before and after games when people are socializing.

Saskatchewan also reported it had 81 new COVID-19 cases on Friday with 108 recoveries. The province’s active case count dropped from 1,459 on Thursday to 1,427 on Friday.

From the press conference, it was apparent the Government of Saskatchewan is sticking to its plan in dealing with the pandemic. The provincial government is trying to balance battling the pandemic, while trying to keep the economy going.

By the sounds of things, it is looking more and more that “Linus blanket” field hospitals in waiting like the converted Merlis Belsher Place sports facility might be put more into action. Merlis Belsher Place and the field hospital at Evraz Place in Regina have some minor action with regards to the pandemic.

The Prince Albert Northern Bears can keep rolling.

The Saskatchewan Health Authority announced Thursday it will reopen its emergency operations centre, and that reopening will go into action on Monday. The emergency operations centre coordinated the health system’s pandemic response in spring.

For now, the Saskatchewan sports community dodged a bullet. Minor hockey and junior A hockey games will continue to be played in the province.

Activities in various other sports will be able to continue as well.

It should be noted that those in Saskatchewan’s sports community have been doing their best to follow public health guidelines and protocols.

If the games, practices and training sessions do indeed stop, it might be something that is ultimately out of the control of the sports community.

Huskies’ Humbert picked for coach mentorship program

Emily Humbert serves for the Huskies in 2015.

The University of Saskatchewan Huskies brought a sweet ray of sunshine to the day on Friday.

The Huskies announced that Emily Humbert, who is an assistant coach with the Huskies women’s volleyball team, was chosen for the University Female Coach Mentorship program, which is run by the Coaching Association of Canada.

The program aims to support the increased recruitment and retention of female coaches through financial and human resource support.

Besides being a coach, Humbert played five seasons for the Huskies women’s volleyball as a middle blocker from 2012 to 2017.

“It is truly and honour to be part of a program that aims to increase the presence of female coaches in the Canadian university system,” said Humbert in a release. “Throughout my time as a U Sports athlete, I was fortunate to learn from incredible female coaches such as Tiffany Dodds-Little, Lindsey Mehler and Shelly Dodds.

“The impact these women had on my development as a player and person was incredible. I hope I can have a similar impact on the athletes that I coach.”

During her time as a Huskies player, Humbert, who stands 5-foot-10, ranks in the top 10 in modern program history in kills, aces, blocks and points. The Saskatoon product received U Sports academic all-Canadian honours multiple times during her playing career.

Humbert took on an assistant coaching role with the Huskies Volleyball Club program in 2013. She went on to head coaching roles with the Huskies Volleyball Club program and at Bedford Road Collegiate.

Humbert currently teaches and Bedford Road and coaches the school’s senior girls volleyball team.

Before the start of last season, Humbert joined the Huskies women’s volleyball team as an assistant coach under head coach Mark Dodds. In the 2019-20 campaign, the Huskies finished sixth in the Canada West Conference with a 14-10 record and earned a playoff berth for the first time in 18 years.

The Huskies fell 2-1 in a best-of-three opening round playoff series to the University of Alberta Pandas, who won a silver medal in the conference post-season.

Humbert is a deserving choice for the University Female Coach Mentorship program.

Ivy League cancels winter sports

Willow Slobodzian skates during a summer session in 2019.

On Thursday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Ivy League cancelled all winter sports due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Ivy League had already cancelled its fall season for the 2020-21 campaign.

That means the men’s and women’s NCAA Division I hockey teams at Brown University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University and Yale University won’t take the ice for any meaningful games in 2020-21.

The Rochester Institute of Technology had previously cancelled its 2020-21 campaigns for its NCAA Division I men’s and women’s hockey teams.

The Cornell University Big Red women’s hockey team features three grads of the Saskatoon Stars female under-18 AAA hockey team.

They include senior defender Willow Slobodzian, rookie defender Ashley Messier and rookie forward Kaitlin Jockims.

All Ivy League competition has been officially halted until March 1, 2021.

If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

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Wright doesn't expect UFC to make a quick return to Sask.

Tom Wright speaks to a crowd at Saskatoon's O'Brians Event Centre.

    The UFC’s first stop in Saskatchewan will likely be its only stop in the next number of years.

    Tom Wright, the UFC’s executive vice-president and general manager for Canada, Australia and New Zealand, wants to bring the promotion back to the “Wheat Province.” The premier professional circuit for mixed martial arts held UFC Fight Night 74 at Saskatoon’s SaskTel Centre on Aug. 23 before 7,202 spectators bringing in a gate of $949,000. Wright was pleased with the gate.

    Standing in the way of a Saskatchewan return is the fact the UFC brass has a lengthy list of Canadian communities they want to visit.

    “It will probably be a few years, because there are a bunch of other cities across the country that we’ve never been to,” said Wright. “We’ve never been to Windsor. We’ve never been to Edmonton. We’ve never been to Ottawa. We’ve never been to St. John’s. We’ve never been to Victoria.

    “There are a tonne of Canadian cities that we’d like to go to. When you are trying to schedule a global sport with a finite number of dates, there are a lot of different cities that want these events. A lot of depends on venue availability, it depends on the time of the year (and) it depends on what else is going on around the world.”

    With that said, Wright was happy with how well things went for the fight card in Saskatoon and with the various functions the promotion put on across the city in the three days leading up to Fight Night 74.

    “We’ve been planning to have this event for quite some time,” said Wright. “We came here last year with the UFC Experience, when we went to Regina. We were really well received.

    “We’ve always wanted to bring our sport to Saskatchewan. We know we have a lot of really engaged and knowledgeable fans here. It has been a great week so far.”

    Wright is keenly aware about how passionately people in Saskatchewan can get behind a sporting interest. From 2002 to 2007, he was the commissioner of the CFL and gained a lot of experience with how much emotion fans of the Saskatchewan Roughriders invest in their team.

Fans enjoyed checking out the UFC Experience outside the SaskTel Centre.

    When government of the province where the colours of green and white dominate passed the Athletics Commission Act in early March, it allowed "The Land of the Living Skies" to hold professional combat sporting events like mixed martial arts.

    In bringing the UFC to the province for the first time, Wright said the organization wanted to have a main event that would be a crowd pleaser. He believed a featherweight tilt between Max Holloway and Charles Oliveira would fit that need. Heading into that fight, Holloway was rated fifth in the UFC’s featherweight rankings, while Oliveira was seventh.

    The card experienced a bit of bad luck on that front, when Oliveira was forced to retire at 1:39 of the first round due to injury. After an exchange, the Sao Paulo, Brazil, product started to favour his right shoulder.

    Oliveira went down and the fight was stopped, giving Holloway a knockout victory.

The co-main event between Neil Magny and Erick Silva lacked action, but Magny managed to win by split decision.

    The 10 bouts leading to the main event matches were really good, so fans did get bang for their buck.

    The welterweight fight between Patrick Cote and Josh Burkman, which was given fight of the night honours, was a back and forth physical battle. It ended at 1:26 of the third round, when Cote, who is a fan favourite from Rimouski, Quebec, knocked out Burkman. The crowd at the SaskTel Centre rose to their feet to give their loudest ovation of the night.

    “I thought the evening was terrific,” said Wright. “The crowd was here early. Half the building was filled before the first fight.

    “They were loud. They were excited. They responded.”

Cote said he could feel the crowd’s passion during his stop in Saskatoon.

    “They are great fans here of mixed martial art,” said Cote. “For sure when you are from the country, you feel the support.

    “The same thing in Montreal. The same thing everywhere in Canada. When I fought in Quebec City, it was the same thing, and here that was just insane.”

    During the UFC’s stop in Saskatoon, the athletes were pretty engaging with the fans that they met. Cote was a huge fan favourite, and his opponent, the veteran Burkman, often spoke with a soft heart.

    “It is great, because there is still a lot of misconception about our sport,” said Wright about the athlete’s interactions with the fans. “There are myths that need to be dispelled and perspectives that need to be informed.

    “The best spokespeople are our athletes. They are engaging, they are intelligent, they are well-spoken and the vast majority have university degrees. These guys and girls are tough competitors, but they are very honourable competitors too.

    “It is the hallmarks of our sport.”

The UFC makes a donation to Special Olympics Canada in Saskatoon.

    During his five-plus years with the UFC, Wright said the organization has made big growth. The fact Fight Night 74 was held in Saskatoon marked another milestone for the promotion in Canada.

    “When we first started, we weren’t sanctioned in Ontario, we weren’t sanctioned in B.C., Saskatchewan,” said Wright. “We only held events in Montreal.

    “Since that five years, we’ve gone from one city and one province to this event will be the 19^th event in Canada in our eighth city and our seventh province, which is pretty cool.”

    Wright said there are a few differences between working as a high executive with the UFC and CFL. The differences include the fact Canadian professional football has been around for over 100 years, while the UFC has been around for just over 20 years and is a global sport.

    The similarities are numerous, which has made work for the UFC feel quite natural.

    “The Canadian Football League you are dealing with world class athletes who train hard and are committed to make sacrifices,” said Wright. “Mixed martial artists are no different. They are world class athletes, hard-working and they train like nobody else. The athletes are very similar.

    “Our fans are really passionate. They are smart, they are engaged (and) they are committed. I have a great team of people I work with here in Canada, and I had a great team in the CFL I worked with as well.”

Back in the Express with more UFC

    I was back in the Saskatoon Express this week writing a column about the UFC making a return to Saskatchewan.

    That column can be found right here.

    If you have any comments or thoughts you would like to pass along about this blog post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

Canadian media loves easy NHL money

An NHL exhibition game held in Saskatoon in September.

            When it comes to sports media in Canada, it is all about the NHL.

            The only place that might not be true is Saskatchewan, where the CFL’s Roughriders are number one. In the consolidated media world that marks the landscape in Canada, the NHL is where it is at as far as sports coverage goes. As a result, coverage for all other sports ultimately suffers.

            As the media in Canada continues to consolidate, the various outlets end up looking to gain the biggest bang for the buck. The industry for all intensive purposes has been in a negative economy cycle for two decades going back to before the Internet became big, which has created the need to get the biggest bang for the buck.

When it comes to covering sports, the NHL has a huge captive audience in Canada that isn’t going anywhere. If you produce anything on that league, you can be sure someone will read it, listen to it, or watch it.

            If media outlets in Canada really wanted to, they could likely get away with just running sports stories on the NHL. In Western Canada, you would still have to acknowledge the CFL, but the NHL rules the roost.

            I remember a conversation I had with an elite level goalie coach in summer. He said there seemed to be more media than ever circling around Canada’s NHL teams. That is likely true.

            Besides having the regular print, radio and television media following the team, you have personnel from NHL clubs themselves putting together stories and videos for websites. You also have people there from the league itself putting together items for various NHL run media platforms.

            Due to the overwhelming attention the NHL gets in Canada, regular media companies are hesitant to cut back coverage in that area. It is giving you the biggest bang for your buck. If you take away coverage in this area, you will lose a big amount of followers and the advertising bottom line gets hurt.

            When cuts do come down, it is usually at the expense of all other local sports. That is seen in various mid-market centres like Kelowna, Red Deer or Lethbridge where papers that once had sports staffs of three or four are shrunk to one or two. As most know, advertising dollars are usually sucked out of those communities to the head office of the consolidated media company.

            Red Deer actually once had a Global station, but that is gone. In Kamloops, you don’t even have a daily newspaper there anymore.

            The reason it is easy to cut sports coverage on the local level is because it takes a lot of resources to go out there and keep followers. Covering things like sports at the Canadian Interuniversity Sport level or sports at the high school level takes a lot of effort to get followers and keep them. In all reality, you are catering to a niche audience that doesn’t have a whole lot of room for expansion.

            In a ratio sense, a set amount of resources that would be used to cover the NHL will yield a much greater return than the same set amount of resources used to cover sports at the local level.

             With Postmedia Network Canada Corporation’s $316-million deal announced earlier this month to buy 175 newspapers and digital publications where the bulk of the deal included former Quebecor Media Inc. assets, local sports coverage will ultimately take another hit.

            Despite the cuts, almost all those that are actually on the front lines covering the local sports scenes in their various communities work very hard at what they do. In a lot of cases, they push themselves too hard to bring those stories to light and suffer burnout.

            In Saskatoon, the work that the sports media does in the city has to be rated as outstanding. The numbers in the sports media in town have shrunk, which seems strange for centre that has witnessed a population increase of about 50,000 people in the last eight years.

            It would be nice if media companies would increase the number of front line reporters in order to bring more local sports stories to the readers, or at least get numbers up to what they used to be a decade ago. There are a lot of good athletes with great stories working hard at what they do, and people don’t realize they are there.

            Unfortunately, it costs money to bring in more reporters and add resources to cover these stories. No consolidated media company would want to do that, when you can turn to the cash cow that is the NHL to make some easy coin.

If you have any feedback on this blog, feel free to email comments to stankssports@gmail.com.