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.

-------

If you like what you see here, you might want to donate to the cause to keep independent media like this blog going. Should you choose to help out, feel free to click on the DONATE button in the upper right corner. Thank you for stopping in.

Will some sports be left out in 2020-21 due to COVID-19?

A campus rec game at Merlis Belsher Place on March 14.

    As the shutdown measures due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic enter a 12^th week, even the greatest optimist in the sports world has a tough thought cross the mind.

    Will there be a winter sports season in 2020-21 let alone a sports season in the summer of 2020?

Of course, UFC and NASCAR have returned to action in North American. UFC runs in a continuous fashion, while NASCAR resumed its 2020 campaign in May with a very hectic schedule.

    Still most sports leagues and organizations in North America have remained shuttered since a mass wave of shutdowns occurred on March 11 and 12.

    For myself, I last attended a live sports event on March 12, when the Saskatoon Contacts fell 5-3 to the Moose Jaw Warriors in Game 3 of a best-of-five Saskatchewan Midget AAA Hockey League series at Merlis Belsher Place. The Warriors swept the series 3-0, but with Hockey Canada cancelling all its sanctioned activities starting on March 13, the Moose Jaw side would not play any further games.

    That was the last competitive hockey game held at Merlis and will likely be the last such contest held there for some time. After hosting University of Saskatchewan campus recreation games on March 14 and 15, Merlis was closed up.

    It now sits as a COVID-19 field hospital in waiting with 250 beds, and that facility is expected to stay that for the foreseeable future likely up to a year.

The Warriors and Contacts go at it in Merlis on March 12.

    It is now June 1, and this will mark the 81^st day without a competitive sporting event being held in Canada. While professional leagues like the NHL and NBA are deep into plans about returning to action and local baseball and softball organizations in Saskatchewan are hoping to hold games in July, no dates for any games have been set.
    On Friday, MLB teams released over 200 minor league players due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    As the days without sports keep accumulating, one wonders how long this could possibly go on?

    First, I wonder how deep the fear factor regarding COVID-19 pandemic goes and that will affect the return of sports?

    HIV/AIDS has been considered a pandemic for decades, but orders haven’t gone out making it illegal for humans to have sex.

    I admit I am not a scientist, but my mind keeps drifting to two theories about how COVID-19 started.

    It seems the largely accepted theory is that COVID-19 mutated naturally before it finally became a virus that could infect humans. Proponents argue that the virus likely originated in a bat and found its way to a number of intermediate hosts before jumping to humans. This jump seems to have occurred in China.

    The world has had lots of pandemics arise from developments in nature, but this is the first one that has caused humans in most areas of the globe to shutdown all non-essential parts of the economy and activities. There is a fear factor here, but it doesn’t make all the dots connect.

    The other theory is that COVID-19 is a “gain of function” experiment gone wrong.

Facilities like Athletic Park in Medicine Hat, Alta., will sit empty.

    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?

    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 has strong ties to the Galveston National Laboratory in the United States, the Centre International de Recherche en Infectiologie in France and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada.

    It is speculated COVID-19 escaped the lab in Wuhan.

    While most researchers lean towards the theory of COVID-19 jumping from animals to humans naturally, both theories are just that – theories. In science terms, they haven’t been proven as laws, so that leads to questions about them being true.

    The theory of the “gain of function” experiment gone wrong seems to connect the dots better regarding the shutdowns that have occurred across the world.

    You can almost see the question of fear of, “What did we do?”

    Then in the panic of battling the unknown, you shut everything down.

    If the “gain of function” gone wrong theory is true, you can’t see anyone admitting to it. If that was the truth and it became public, it would likely cause 10-times more fear than there is now.

Mosaic Stadium in Regina will be devoid of action for a while.

    There would be a call for questions to be answered and a wider call to end “gain of function” type of research.

    No matter where the fear came from, it is obvious it is there from medical officials and governments. How they deal with the pandemic can be widely debated.

    As for the sports world, that fear will affect its attempts to start up again, and most other aspects of society will have to deal with that fear as well.

    Since the shutdowns in North America occurred on March 11 and 12, one constant most governments have done is issued limits on mass gatherings often to less than 30 people.

    In recent days, those limits have been pushed in many places in the world especially in the United States due to protests against racism stemming from the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn., on May 25. Floyd, an African-American, died after being arrested by police.

    Video has surfaced with Floyd being pinned on the ground with a police officer identified as Derek Chauvin driving his knee into the back of Floyd’s neck.

    Four officers were fired over the incident including Chauvin, and Chauvin, who is Caucasian, has been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter over Floyd’s death.

The SaskTel Centre has sat unused for a lengthy stretch.

    In Canada, there was a protest against racism in Toronto on Saturday that drew 3,500 to 4,000 people. On Sunday, a protest against racism occurred in Vancouver that drew 3,500 people.

    Also on Sunday, another protest was held against racism in Montreal, which police later declared as illegal and included acts of violence.

    With people wearing protective masks to guard against COVID-19, one wonders if Canada’s criminal mask law will come into play with the Montreal protests.

    The mask law introduced by the Government of Canada in Bill C-309 that became law on June 19, 2013 bans the use of wearing masks during a riot or other unlawful assembly, and those convicted could face up to 10 years in prison.

    Canada’s Criminal Code, Section 351(2) covers “Disguise with Intent” that makes it an indictable offence to wear a mask or disguise to commit and indictable offence.

    These protest stories have actually pushed COVID-19 coverage to the back of news reports.

The Canalta Centre sits empty in Medicine Hat, Alta.

    With large gatherings occurring for the sake of having a protest, it will be interesting to see if that actually pushes the bar to actually allow mass gatherings in other walks of life or how these events will affect the interpretation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    For the sports world, teams and leagues are at the mercy of medical health officials when it comes to getting going again. I could see the United States going ahead with sporting events a lot quicker than Canada, because sports is a billion dollar industry in the United States.

    Outside of hockey, Canada just doesn’t have the same attachment to sport despite having elite athletes on par with those in the United States.

    It is possible some sports might get going and others don’t.

    Last Thursday to Saturday, the six time defending CJFL champion Saskatoon Hilltops had a fundraising bottle drive, but they didn’t canvas neighbourhoods at the advice of health officials. They received items at three different drop off points, with director and volunteers accepting recyclables wearing gloves and masks.

    Team supporters could arrange for pickup from team officials, but the recyclables had to be left on the curve or an outside walkway.

People in Canada rallied for the Raptors NBA title win in June of 2019.

    Businesses can tell you all about hoops health officials make you go through. Many stores have arrows to guide traffic flow, social distance indicators for checkout lines and hairstylists have to get dressed like they will perform open heart surgery.

    When you see medical health officials keep putting up hoops like this, you wonder how long it will be until sports will comeback in Canada.

    One thing sports can do is create unity in communities. Just remember the Toronto Raptors run to the NBA title a year ago.

    If you’ve seen mainstream media news reports regarding protests over the last few days, society needs a lot of help in the unity department right now.

Huskies mourn passing of the “Voice of the Rutherford Rink”

For many, many years Bruce Gordon has been the voice and wit booming around first Rutherford and then MPB. Huskie hockey has truly lost a part of what makes it so special with the passing of Bruce. We will miss him and our thoughts are with his family during this difficult time. pic.twitter.com/qpYGJ1TIvl

— USask Huskie Men's Hockey (@HuskiesMHKY) May 31, 2020

    He brought part of the charm of the old rink into the new rink.

    When the University of Saskatchewan Huskies men’s hockey team is next introduced to the ice for whenever their next home game will be played during these COVID-19 pandemic times, the “Voice of the Rutherford Rink” won’t be making that call.

    On Friday, Bruce Gordon, who has been the public address announcer for the Huskies men’s hockey game since 1985, passed away of natural causes.

    Born in 1961, Gordon’s involvement with the Huskies began in 1979, when he was the team’s radio play-by-play voices as the Dogs surged to prominence in the era when Dave King was the team’s head coach.

    Gordon became the team’s public address announcer in 1985 and also served as the chief of off-ice officials.

    With his bilingual humour, he added a flare to Huskies men’s hockey teams home games that stood the test of time and was unmatched.

    When the Huskies men’s and women’s hockey teams left their old home in the ancient Rutherford Rink for Merlis Belsher Place before the start of the 2018-19 season, Gordon remained the public address announcer for the Huskies men’s hockey team. He performed that role for the Huskies for their only two seasons at Merlis to date before passing away.

    In the book “Dogs On Ice: A History of Hockey At the University of Saskatchewan,” Gordon stated how much the team meant to him.

Bruce Gordon’s last game was the Huskies Canada West title win on Feb.29.

    “When Dave King asked me to help with Huskie hockey, it was like I had died and gone to heaven,” said Gordon. “I have been treated so well.

    “The Huskies are a class organization, everybody shows appreciation for the work we do. I love the game, and I love being part of this organization and its loyalty. I buy into the values that say ‘nobody is going to outwork is.’

    “Ultimately, it’s not what I have done for the program, it is what the Huskie program has done for me.”

    The last game Gordon worked as the Huskies public address announcer was on February 29, when they downed the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds 3-1 in Game 2 of the Canada West Championship series before a record crowd of 2,667 spectators at Merlis. The Huskies won the Canada West title that night sweeping the best-of-three series 2-0.

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

-------                                     

    If you like what you see here, you might want to donate to the cause to keep independent media like this blog going. Should you choose to help out, feel free to click on the DONATE button in the upper right corner. Thank you for stopping in.