The top young athletes in the province are gathered together this week in Prince Albert to compete for a gold medal at the 2014 Saskatchewan Winter Games.
Over 150 of these young adults from the Humboldt, Fort Qu’Appelle and Watrous areas will make up Team Prairie Central, one of nine different district teams comprised of around 1,700 athletes in total. Six athletes from Davidson and area, including Elbow’s Shane Lafontaine, Hanley’s Hanna Anderson and Kianna Dietz, Loreburn’s Dodge Long, Davidson’s Breanna Shaw and Hawarden’s Nolan Haugen are members of Team Prairie Central.
“This is my first time (going),” said Nolan, 13, who is a forward for the Prairie Central hockey team. “I’m really excited to be a part of it and represent my zone. I’m expecting it to be hard, but I’m just going to give it my all.”
Nolan, a member of the Clavet Cougars, said he made the team at a three-day tryout in Warman, which was structured as a round-robin tournament. The Kenaston School Grade 8 student said they haven’t had any practices since the team was picked, but he doesn’t believe playing with a different team is going to cause them any problems.
“We’ll just work hard and try to win a bunch of games,” he said. “It’ll be kind of new playing with a bunch of new kids, but it’ll be really fun.”
Dodge is one of the kids who will line up with Nolan on the Prairie Central male hockey team. Breanna and Kianna are going to be playing for the female hockey team, while Hanna will skip the female curling team and Shane is going to be trying his best with the badminton team.
Loreburn’s Grant Abbott, coach of the Prairie Central badminton team, said they have a good squad this year and the hope is the badminton team can compete for a medal at the games. He said nine players on their team belong to a Saskatoon club and are pretty familiar with each other and they’ve also gotten together for a practice as Prairie Central before the games, so they should be ready going in.
“Winning a gold would be a bonus,” said Abbott. “We talked about that at the practice that the main objective is to go in there and have a great experience and to have lots of fun. For a lot of these kids that are playing this will be their only opportunity to play in badminton because it is only every four years. Hopefully they’ll really enjoy it and maybe if they’re lucky enough they’ll participate in the Summer Games in two years in a different sport.
“I know I really enjoyed it four years ago,” he added. “My son (Ian) was on the team four years ago and it was a great experience. It’s a lot of fun and win or lose hopefully it’ll be a great time.”
To read more please see the Feb. 17 print edition of The Davidson Leader.