Comment: Summer Stories 2014
- Paul Chartrand | August 07, 2014
The calendar says it should be warm outside so it must be time for summer stories. For me summer stories are sports stories.
The North American Indigenous Games were held in Regina 20-27 July. I do not know much about NAIG but it appears to be a multi-sports event for junior athletes 18 and under. I wish all the young athletes the best success in their competitions. It is very nice to see the young ones get a chance to develop their skills and make some friends. It is very important for people to start young in their sports, because that is when the nervous system is developing. It is well near impossible to excel at the top level in a sport that you did not play as a youngster. Remember when Michael Jordan tried baseball after he retired from basketball? Now I don't mean to start as young as that little 11-year old Lucie Li who played in the Women's U.S. Open. That was in golf, for you readers who don't know the great Scottish game. I believe that most if not all players on the LPGA (the top professional tour in golf) could have played at the same level or near to it at 11 years old but most parents prefer a child to grow up in a more normal style rather than put in all the hard work and practice in one sport. It was cute and so the media jumped all over it. Too many young ones get burnt out and lose their love for the game by the time they leave home.
Being of the remembering generation rather than of the playing generation, I am already well into my summer stories. So I might as well dig a bit more into my desiccated old memory glands and remember how it was 'back in the day.' I grew up in St Laurent, a small Métis community along the southeast shore of Lake Manitoba, where school was taught by missionary nuns and sports were taboo. I learned how to skate when I did grade nine at an Oblate residential school where I never returned on account of a case of homesickness. I actually had skated a few times before that. It had been on the local muskrat ponds when my foot fit the one antique pair of dull skates that floated around our family of eleven boys and one girl. I never went far in hockey, or 'ice hockey' as it is called internationally. I played for senior teams in Manitoba and when I ended up in Australia during my adult life I actually was named to the national team that consisted mainly of Canadians, but unfortunately we had no opposition to play against! Aussie is far from the hockey world and our team would not have worried any decent North American amateur team. My career highlight was playing for Sagkeeng Old Timers (which was written in as "Sagging Old Timers" in one tournament schedule) from Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba where a friend and teammate was Saskatchewan Hockey Hall of Fame legend Jim Neilson of New York Rangers fame.
After high school, I began to play baseball back home as the community created a team at that time. We played in a local league and I became a pitcher. I think I could throw hard but in those days there were no American baseball scouts looking for professional players so I ended up playing in various leagues in Canada and getting paid for the fun, at least with some teams. I lived in Australia from 1974 to 1982. The big game there is cricket, followed by various codes of football generally known as 'rugby' in Canada. Baseball was just building up in Australia at that time and I was selected to play on the national team. In this sport at least we had opponents to play against. As a result of my baseball pitching experience today I am competent to order up to five beers in the Japanese language. And to say 'thank you.'
A late friend of mine who was heavily involved in developing the Australian game, Tim Nilsson, had three boys who made the pro ranks and one of them David, was on the American League All-Star team as a catcher with the Milwaukee Brewers 'back in the day.' I am glad to see many young Aussies in the major leagues these days, as well as more and more Canadians who are making it to the 'big time.'
In summer stories it is always nice to remember how it used to be. But today in places such as NAIG there is the thrill of watching the young ones compete. You can see the energy and life in their faces as they savour the thrill of competition and the rewards for all the hard work that comes before the dream. Life is good in the summer.