Covering sports in 2023 was a grind but still fun

Connor Bedard jets past a checker from the Blades in April.

Boxing Day proved to be a perfect day to repair drawers on a dresser that sat broken since the first week of October.

Often, these types of projects break into a four hour or even a total day ordeal. The repair in this instance went easy and only took an hour.

Next brings the question of why it took so long to get to that repair?

Welcome to life when you are involved in the sports world in Canada.

The schedule was so busy on that front the repairs to the dresser kept always being dropped on the priority list. I finally got to the repair on Boxing Day.

This isn’t a new phenomenon in the sports world. I’ve got friends involved in that world who have had like a load of lumber and sheets of drywall sitting in their basements for three years waiting to be used for renovations that never seem to get done.

You start to wonder if there were any regrets about buying the building materials in the first place.

When you are involved in sports in Canada, it becomes a life consuming thing. Schedules are never normal with that world either outside of the fact there are set phases to the seasons in sports.

When pressures build to focus more on aspects outside of life in the sports world when you are involved in the sports world, it can make being in the sports world a grind.

For me, 2023 was a grind being in the sports world. I still enjoyed it, but it was a grind.

Things were going smoothly for the first two and a half months of 2023. About eight days into March, I ended up getting COVID-19, and it spread to the whole household. I missed covering the last two weeks of the 2022-23 WHL regular season.

The Blades enjoy a Game 7 series winner from Spencer Shugrue (#26).

The best part for my household and myself was the fact the COVID-19 battle was like dealing with a bad flu with extreme fatigue at the start. For the first five days after getting COVID-19, I slept 19 hours each day, and I had never felt that exhausted in my life.

Unfortunately, that seemed to set an ominous tone that prevailed for the rest of the year.

After the battle with COVID-19 wrapped up, I was ready to cover the WHL Playoffs, and I was ready to go when the post-season arrived. When I am covering WHL games, I am in my happy place.

The 2023 playoffs were memorable. I worked the exciting seven game series between the Saskatoon Blades and at the time 17-year-old phenom centre Connor Bedard and the Regina Pats.

The Blades claimed the series deciding Game 7 at home 4-1 before a sellout crowd of 14,768 spectators at the SaskTel Centre. Bedard was outstanding in the series recording 10 goals, 10 assists and a plus-eight rating.

In the second round of the post-season, the Blades dropped the first three games of their series with the Red Deer Rebels and proceeded to rally back to take the set 4-3. They took Game 7 of the series at home by a 5-2 score before 9,489 spectators at the SaskTel Centre.

In the process, the Blades became the third team in the history of the WHL to fall behind 3-0 in a best-of-seven series only to rally back and take it 4-3. The Spokane Chiefs, who were guided by Mike Babcock as head coach, trailed the Portland Winterhawks 3-0 before rallying to take a first round series 4-3 in 1996. The Kelowna Rockets fell behind the Seattle Thunderbirds 3-0 in 2013 before rallying back to claim that series 4-3.

Utility player Spencer Shugrue became “Mr. Game 7” for the Blades collecting three goals and an assist in Saskatoon’s two series deciding Game 7 wins.

The Blades would be swept by Winnipeg Ice 4-0 in the Eastern Conference Championship Series. In the WHL Championship Series, the Ice fell 4-1 to the Seattle Thunderbirds.

Spencer Shugrue (#26) became “Mr. Game 7” for the Blades.

The Thunderbirds made it to the title game of the Memorial Cup tournament that determines a CHL champion, which was held in Kamloops, B.C. Seattle was blanked 5-0 in the championship game by the QMJHL champion Quebec Remparts, who were guided head coach, general manager and hockey legend Patrick Roy.

I piled up the road kilometres working games in Regina, Red Deer and Winnipeg. In working the first two games of the WHL final in person in Winnipeg, I saw the Ice win their final game as the Winnipeg Ice. They beat the Thunderbirds 3-2 in the opening game of the WHL Championship Series held before 5,531 spectators at the Canada Life Centre, and the Ice weren’t able to get another win for the rest of that set.

That was the first time I was in the building to work games in the WHL Championship Series since 2019. It was also the first time I’ve been in the building to work games in the WHL Championship Series since the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on the sports schedules in 2020 and the first half of 2021 and hung ominously over the sports world for the second half of 2021 and the first half of 2022.

When I was in Regina, Red Deer and Winnipeg in the 2023 WHL Playoffs, it felt great, because the focus was on hockey. I also got good extended family time in during my stay in Winnipeg.

When I got off the road, it seemed there would be a mini-crisis in my life away from the sports world. There were times I was asking myself if I should have even left Saskatoon for the road. Looking back, the road was a reprieve.

After returning home from Regina covering Games 3 and 4 of the series between the Pats and Blades, I was immediately jumped with something after getting off the road in my life away from the sports world.

My reaction was, “I was only gone two days! How can life be so terrible?”

The Blades attracted massive home crowds during 2023 WHL Playoffs. 

The best part was all these mini-crisis would pass after two days and seem like nothing two weeks later, but going through those day after day with those around you freaking out was draining.

The football front was fun as the Saskatoon Valkyries won their eighth WWCFL title in June and the Saskatoon Hilltops claimed their 23^rd CJFL championship in November.

The Valkyries blanked the Calgary Rage 40-0 in the WWCFL title game played at Griffiths Stadium to conclude the campaign with a perfect 8-0 record. The pressures of life outside the sports world seemed to subside during the Valkyries season. The Valkyries have a great bunch, and I enjoyed being around that bunch.

Shortly after Hilltops season got going in August, it seemed the uncontrollable pressures from outside the sports world cranked up again. The Hilltops as always were outstanding to deal with. I’ve covered them and the Valkyries regularly since moving to Saskatoon in the summer of 2014.

The Hilltops posted a perfect 12-0 campaign and won the Canadian Bowl contest that determines a CJFL champion 17-10 over the host Westshore Rebels at Starlight Stadium in Langford, B.C., which is a suburb of Victoria. The contest was played in rains that fell in Biblical proportions.

The Hilltops had a historic campaign. In 12 games, they gave up just 76 points, which was their lowest total overall for a season dating back to 1949.

Hilltops defensive end Riece Kack had a memorable performance in the CJFL semifinal win over the OFC champion St. Clair Saints, who are from Windsor, Ont., in October at SMF Field. Kack pile up six sacks to set a new record for a CJFL playoff game. He actually became the first player to register six sacks in any CJFL contest be it regular season, playoffs or CJFL championship game.

Emmarae Dale (#45) makes a big hit on defence for the Valkyries

Still in the department of being honest, the pressures from life outside the sports world affected the fun I had covering the Hilltops during their season. If felt like a greater grind than covering the WHL Playoffs. The factors that were there had nothing to do with the team and were out of my control.

I know there were at least three times for me covering games I actually drifted to looking forward to the season being over. That had never happened to me in any time in my life when I was dealing with football. It did happen in the first full WHL season in 2021-22 with regular play after navigating the wrenches of the COVID-19 pandemic, but that came from mental fatigue from the pandemic.

Anyways, I just gutted and grinded all that out.

When the Hilltops played the Rebels for the 2023 CJFL title, I covered that contest remotely watching it online at the home office. I knew the Hilltops were going to come back that night, and I was hoping to go to the social function to celebrate that night when they got home.

The best I felt for that season was the 30 minutes after the Hilltops won the CJFL title. The pumped up elation of a championship win was there.

Unfortunately, technical problems with the computer, social media and the Internet threw a bucket of water on my joy. All of that was out of my control, and I was ready to punch a few computer screens.

I got a short write thru up before midnight that the Hilltops had won. By the time I posted the finished version of my column on the Hilltops winning their 23^rd CJFL title, it was 8 a.m. the next morning. I gutted and grinded through getting that done, but enjoying the Hilltops accomplishment lasted for 30 minutes after the CJFL title game wrapped up.

The Valkyries raise the WWCFL championship trophy.

Life away from the sport world saw the stress become much lower starting a week after the Hilltops season ended and has continued as I write this piece.

Trigger warning: politics

The next part of this column I have to throw up the trigger warning as I will be talking about politics.

Living in Canada these days, talking politics can get you fired from jobs and has gotten people fired from jobs.

Be it world, national, provincial or civic politics, I have never talked more about politics in my life away from the sports world as I have in this past year. To be honest, I don’t like the political world, and I don’t like the extremes on both the right and the left that seem to dominate that world. I see myself as the “common sense” Canadian that appears to no longer have a place and is no longer wanted in that world.

The Government of Canada has gotten their hands into tinkering with the sports and media worlds that have both been my life since 1996. That actually hasn’t bothered me that much in the grand scheme of things, and I find you just adjust to things as they come up like with the various government policies that came up in the COVID-19 pandemic.

I believe the next election federally and elections on the provincial and civic levels will be one issue referendums. 

To me, that referendum will be do you believe issues with the environment are bad enough that elected governments must be given basically a blank cheque to run up deficits as big as they want to handle this issue.

Homes and gasoline vehicles in Canada are way more efficient than they were in the 1970s and 1980s. I know for those on the extreme left that will never be enough, and they would like to see the elimination of gasoline vehicles of all sorts and gas in general in Canada.

The Government of Canada under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his minister of environment and climate change in Steven Guilbeault are in my judgment “all in” on tackling the environment issue to the point they should be allowed to do everything and anything on that front.

Riece Kack (#47) makes a record sack for the Hilltops.

According to Statista, Canada had the 10^th highest carbon tax rate in the world as of March 31, 2023 among the 25 countries at that time that were listed with carbon taxes with Iceland having two rates. The United States, India, Russia and China were not listed as having any carbon taxes at that time. China runs a Chinese national carbon trading scheme.

Guilbeault has been a climate activist since age five and was a member of Greenpeace Canada from 1997 to 2007. In 2001, Guilbeault and British activist Chris Holden scaled Toronto’s CN Tower.

After getting to a height of 340 metres, the pair unfurled a banner that read, “Canada and Bush Climate Killers.”

Guilbeault and Holden were arrested and charged with mischief. The stunt cost the CN Tower Corporation an estimated $50,000, and Guilbeault was sentenced to one year’s probation and the court ordered him to pay a portion of the costs.

To me, Guilbeault is an activist with an agenda, and I doubt very much he would or will consider anyone with a viewpoint that is opposite his. Anyone with an opposing view would be dismissed as being wrong.

In my view, the city government in Saskatoon views the environment issue as being the big issue.

In the end, I believe all this will add up to continuing inflation and putting lots of financial pressures on everyone in Canada in 2024. I don’t see the political world getting better in 2024, and if you don’t believe me, just search any political issue on Platform-X formerly known as Twitter to see the nasty keyboard fights.

Even if you don’t have an interest in the political world, the decisions made in that world will influence and change the worlds you interact in.

Getting pictured with the Canadian Bowl was a highlight in 2023.

For myself as I have done since March of 2020, the goal will be to try and adjust the best I can and stay as healthy physically and mentally as I can. There is only so much I can control, and everything else is going to play out as it is going to be.

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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