No repeat as Kings fall to Stratford

It was an emotional night at the Dan Snyder Memorial Arena last Sunday as the defending Sutherland Cup all-Ontario Jr. B hockey champions, the Elmira Sugar Kings, lost to the visiting Stratford Cullitons in Game Six of their second round series, eliminating them from the playoffs. The Cullitons managed to erase a two-goal deficit in the third period to clinch the series with a 4-3 win over the Kings. “It was a huge game. We were down 3-1 going into the third period and any time you are playing the champs you have to knock them out,” said Cullitons head coach Phil Westman after the game. “I think Elmira is the strongest team in the league – the puck just bounced our way tonight.”

The Kings were on a high after defeating Stratford at the Allman Arena two nights before in a nail-biter that saw the Elmira squad ahead by three midway through the second period only to be forced into overtime as the Cullitons managed to claw their way back with three unanswered goals of their own in regulation time.

The Kings did not waste any time in the forced frame, as Brett Priestap sealed the deal with a clutch goal 36 seconds into the period. The win kept Elmira’s hopes alive heading back to home ice. “Brett Priestap is just a heart and soul player, and he did everything that he possibly could out on the ice and then some. I would love to have a team of Brett Priestaps,” said Dean DeSilva Kings head coach. Back home, the Kings were in complete control of Sunday’s game until the third period when emotions began to run high, overwhelming the team.

“As coaches we can talk to them all we want about controlling their emotions, but once that game starts it is up to the players to figure it out. For 45 minutes of the game they did, but Stratford needs the credit: they never gave up, they kept battling and put pucks on net and they got a few bounces here and there in their favour,” said DeSilva.

The hits started to get harder and the Cullitons began to provoke Elmira players after the whistle, leading to unnecessary penalties to forwards Michael Hasson and Brad Kraus. That led to a momentum swing that Stratford easily took command of, eventually scoring the equalizer on a power play.

“We had to come out playing with all we had in the third period. By no means did Elmira sit back and try and play defence, they tried to bring their game, but it is natural to sit back and the pressure was on them to seal it. When we scored to bring the game to 3-2 it ignited our bench and it sinks their bench. In Junior hockey there are so many momentum swings, and it just ran our way in this game,” said Westman.

With the score tied at three apiece, the Cullitons forced Kings goalie Nick Horrigan to work between the pipes, creating confusion in front of the net that allowed Steve Dol to tip the game- and series-winner past Horrigan with just under five minutes left to play.

The Kings would never recover.

“The guys feel horrible but we let our emotions control us – that is part of the sport and life and growing up and learning. That is the life skill they can take out of this game,” said DeSilva. “I couldn’t have asked more from these guys. We were hoping to come into the room afterwards and it was going to be blood, sweat and cheers but unfortunately it was blood, sweat and tears.”

As the final whistle blew the Kings took to centre ice and raised their sticks saluting more than 1,400 fans who packed the arena to see their team play. Slowly the Kings left the ice after receiving a standing ovation from the crowd.
“It is real tough for teams to repeat and real tough when you have an older team like we do because their emotions go up and down and a couple of years from now they are going to look back and think what did we do and what didn’t we do but I feel they gave everything they possibly had. I pushed them hard all year and they gave me everything they had; I could not ask anymore from them,” said DeSilva.

The Kings will lose eight players to graduation this year. A few players are off to the CIS and NCAA, including leading scorer Andrew Smith, who racked up 44 goals in the season, and netminder Horrigan, who compiled 51 wins against 23 loses and a career 0.912 save percentage.

“We will be in full rebuilding mode next year,” said DeSilva.

After the arena emptied, a visibly emotional Horrigan slipped out of the change room heading to the rink to look at the ice he called home for the last three seasons.

Standing at rink level he was greeted by four young fans who each in turn gave their hero a hug and told him he had done all he could. Horrigan spoke to the young boys for a few minutes as they told him they would all love to play as a King one day. He told them to work hard and never give up on their dreams before turning to the glass to look at the rink one last time as a King.

Airshow sets June date for this year’s outing

Aviation fans will have the opportunity to kick-start their summer season when the annual Waterloo Air Show takes to the skies on June 2-3, two months earlier than last year’s show. This is the fourth year for the show, which has been held on a different weekend each year for one simple reason.

“We do it to accommodate the Snowbirds schedule,” said Diana Spremo, the event’s director of marketing and media relations. The nine-plane team is known internationally for their high-flying stunts and breathtaking aerial acrobatics.

“They tell us when they’re going to be in the region, and say ‘if you’d like us, this is when you’re going to have to put on the show.’”

The show will include other returning acts such as the CF-18 jet fighter demonstration team, the Canadian Harvard aircraft formation team which took to the skies during World War II, and the T-33 Silver Star ‘Mako Shark’.
There is also going to be an exciting array of new acts this year, said Spremo, which includes OTTO the Helicopter to entertain children, and Red Bull racing pilot Pete McLeod who in 2009 became the first Canadian to participate in the elite air racing championship, finishing fifth overall in 2010.

Spremo also said that this year the air show will provide free on-site parking at the airport, unlike last year where they had to run shuttle buses to ferry spectators to off-site parking.

“People can just park and walk to the show site and not have to deal with shuttle buses,” she said, adding the walk could still be up to half a kilometre – depending how early fans get arrive.

Last year’s event saw between 20,000-25,000 spectators, a significant drop from the 40,000 that attended two years ago, and Spremo attributed that drop to the poor weather.

“On the Sunday of our airshow was the same day as the tornado in Goderich,” she said. “We managed to get most of the planes up, but we had to call them down because of the poor weather and it was coming in very quickly.”
Tickets will be on sale soon, and this year the air show will charge for seniors and children under 10 years old, when in previous years their entry was free. Spremo said that was to give them a better idea of how many people are attending.

Gates will open at 10 a.m. both days of the event, with the show starting at 1 p.m. and there will be food vendors, static displays with airplanes and their crews available for fans to interact with, and there will be autographs and merchandise available.

“We do encourage people to come spend the day with us. We’re trying to create more of a festival atmosphere.”

Visit www.waterlooairshow.com for more information.

Kings face elimination after 2-1 loss Wednesday at WMC

Hockey is a game of inches, and the Elmira Sugar Kings are learning that the hard way as they’ve fallen behind the Stratford Cullitons 3-1 in their best-of-seven semifinal series and are on the brink of being ousted from the playoffs. The Game 4 loss came on home ice in front of a crowd of more than 1,000 people on Wednesday night as they dropped a 2-1 decision to the visiting Cullitons. The Kings lost Game 1 of the series 4-1 on Mar. 16 in Stratford, but responded with a hard-fought 2-1 win on home ice last Sunday.

The team followed up their win with a devastating double-overtime loss in Stratford on Monday night, a game in which the Kings hit the goal post twice in the first overtime. All four games thus far have been typical playoff hockey, with big hits and bigger saves at both ends of the ice. The same was true on Wednesday night, but the Kings head coach was unhappy with his team’s overall play in what was a crucial point in the series.

“The better team won. The group that came out and played as a team won the hockey game, and the group that came out and played as individuals didn’t,” Dean DeSilva said following the Game 4 loss Wednesday night.
“We’ve got a game plan in place, we’ve talked to them about it before the game, but once that game starts it’s up to them to execute it.”

“]Four minutes into the game goaltender Nick Horrigan made a spectacular left pad save on Stratford’s Chad Binning, then followed it up with another big right pad save seconds later on Ryan Watson to keep the score tied at zero. Those saves jump-started the Kings and less than five minutes later Brett Priestap fired his fourth goal of the playoffs and first of the series past Cullitons netminder Jesse Raymond to give Elmira a 1-0 lead, assisted by Michael Hasson and Riley Sonnenburg.

The Kings dominated the remainder of the period, outshooting Stratford 21-12 and leading 1-0 heading into the intermission, but in the second period bad habits and bad penalties snuck into the Kings game.
“I thought I had addressed that with players before the game but obviously not,” said DeSilva.

Stratford turned the tables and tied the game at 18:29 when the puck bounced onto Ray Huether’s stick in the slot and he tapped it into the open net from five feet out. The Cullitons outshot Elmira 10-8 in the second, but the home team still had their chances, in particular Brady Campbell who was stopped on a partial breakway with 11:08 left on the clock, and again with 3:15 remaining when he stripped the defender of the puck and walked in alone on Raymond but was turned aside to keep the game tied.

The third period turned into a war of attrition as neither side was willing to give an inch past their own blueline, but again the Kings had their chances and were stymied. The best came with about 8:50 left on the clock when Priestap was sent away on a breakaway, but robbed by the left pad of Raymond as Priestap tried to cut across the front of the net and tuck the puck home.

That turned out to be the save of the game – and perhaps the save of the series – as Stratford immediately turned up the ice and scored a rather weak goal on Horrigan on a shot that eluded him through traffic. The final seconds were frantic as the Kings tried to tie it, but they failed to do so, falling 2-1 on the scoreboard and now trail 3-1 in the series heading back to Stratford on Friday night. Raymond finished with 38 saves in the win and has now made 159 saves on 165 shots in the series, but Priestap wouldn’t go so far as to say that the goalie is now in shooters’ heads.

“He’s making the saves from outside it’s just that nobody is going to the dirty areas to put the puck in,” Priestap said. “Since Game 2 we haven’t kept it simple, we’ve been trying to do too much, and Horrigan is keeping us in it so we have to help him out a bit.”

For DeSilva, the reason the team trails in the series is his players’ refusal to do all the little things necessary to win in the playoffs.

“Guys are trying to be too fancy instead of just getting the puck down low and jamming it at the net, which is what we want to do. Just jam and look for rebounds and create confusion in front of the net and score ugly goals.
“But these guys want the highlight reel goals, and they don’t realize that the dirty goals win you championships. The highlight reel goals will make you a hero for one night.” Game 5 of the series goes Friday night in Stratford at 7:30 p.m., and should the Kings force a Game 6, it will be played at the Dan Snyder Arena on Sunday at 7 p.m.

Hockey’s in her blood

Monica D’Arcy grew up on the ice. The Heidelberg teen started skating at the age of two at local arenas and quickly found a love for hockey, joining her first team at age four. “There is just something about it, I can’t really explain it, I just love to play,” said D’Arcy sitting at her family’s kitchen table. D’Arcy’s love for the game has exposed her to many teams in the area, including playing with the Twin Centre Stars, a boys’ hockey team; her high school squad, the St. David’s Celtics in Waterloo; and her current team, the Waterloo Ravens Bantam AA.

“There is a difference between boys’ hockey and girls’ hockey. The boys tend to have more skills, but the girls have more determination, drive, and just work harder,” she said. Earlier this month, D’Arcy joined some 180 other female hockey players to compete in the Ontario Winter Games held in Collingwood. She was the only player from the region to participate in the tournament chosen from more than 700 girls across the province. The Ontario Winter Games are a multi-sport competition showcasing some of Ontario’s best amateur athletes. Women’s hockey first participated in the games in 1985.

“It was an amazing experience – they treated us like we were at the Olympics. We were placed on teams and the teams did everything together,” said D’Arcy. “It really helped us connect as we were pretty much strangers at the beginning. They were all so talented and it was great to be able to play with them.”

D’Arcy played for Team Agosta, named after Meghan Agosta, a member of Canadian Olympic women’s hockey team that won gold medals at both the Turin and Vancouver Olympics.  D’Arcy and her teammates quickly bonded and found themselves in the gold medal game after winning the semi-final game in triple overtime. Unfortunately they came up short, taking silver in a game that saw them lose 2-1 in sudden-death overtime.

“Even though we didn’t win the gold it felt like we did: we were all so happy to be there and had such a great time. We were a real team and played like one,” she said.

A special crest was worn by the all the girls at the competition in memory of Daron Richardson who lost her life to suicide at the age of 14. Richardson had competed in the 2010 games. The crest, a blue heart with the letters D.I.F.D (Do It For Daron) is part of a youth-driven initiative focused on raising awareness about youth mental health issues.

“I was very proud to wear the crest and represent her. I did not know her but met a lot of girls who did and they said she was kind and very outgoing,” said D’Arcy.

With an Ontario games silver medal behind her, D’Arcy plans to continue playing hockey with hopes of joining a junior girls’ team in the near future.

Deal averts strike at EDCL

It wasn’t quite an eleventh-hour deal, but workers at Elmira District Community Living managed to avoid a strike this week by agreeing to a new three-year deal with their employer. Local union president Trudy Allen said that 94 per cent of employees at EDCL, members of OPSEU Local 253, voted in favour of the new contract. “Talks were going on Saturday night, and we met Sunday morning at 10 a.m. to finalize the details,” said Allen of the deal, which was ratified Monday afternoon.

The workers, who had been without a contract since March 2010, were seeking a four-year deal that would provide a lump-sum payment of $850 in each of the first two years per full time equivalency, and a 2.5 per cent wage increase in years three and four.

EDCL countered with a lump-sum payment of $1,132 combined over the first two years, a one per cent increase in year three, and a zero per cent increase in year four.
The deal which was eventually accepted by the union was that same offered by EDCL, but with the fourth year removed, meaning both sides will be back at the bargaining table when this new deal expires next April.
“We’re hoping to give the employer time and us time; we wanted to avert a strike for a number of reasons,” said Allen, adding this deal was more of a way of buying more time until they have a clearer sense of how much provincial government funding will continue over the next year.

“We weighed out all of our options, and we decided to avert a strike.”

EDCL executive director Greg Bechard was unavailable for comment this week on the contract discussions, but said last week that he was in a very difficult position, given that he feels his employees were very deserving of the raises they were demanding, but that he had an ever-tightening budget to work with.

Bechard said the union’s earlier demands would have added up to about $500,000, and would have forced him to make layoffs and cutbacks.
The annual operating budget for EDCL is approximately $6 million, and the company employs about 180 full and part-time workers and serves approximately 150 families.

Wellesley church project

Hunke Construction is one step closer to building an affordable housing duplex in the village of Wellesley after receiving regional approval last week. The project is one of five that regional council gave the green light to as part of its plan to build at least 500 new affordable housing units by 2013. The five projects totaling 70 units bring the number to 452, just 48 short of that goal. Aside from the unit in Wellesley, which is to be built at an old church located at 3639 Nafziger Rd., council also approved a project by MennoHomes Inc. to renovate an old three-bedroom home on Ratz Street in Elmira, and to develop an adjacent vacant lot into a duplex for two four-bedroom units.

Bob Hunke said he hopes to have the project in Wellesley finished by August, which involves converting a 150-year-old church, originally the site of a Swedenborgian Church building constructed in 1858 and situated on approximately 0.1 acres of land. The project will convert the old church into two units: a three-bedroom barrier-free unit and a four-bedroom unit to accommodate large families. For the past two years the property has been used by Morningstar Family Ministries to run a private academy for students with learning disabilities, but the ministry has since relocated to another location.

“It’s exciting. We love Wellesley,” said Hunke, whose company also has an affordable housing unit on Queens Bush Road. He said the building should be popular for local Mennonites who have larger families and a need for  more space.

Demolition inside the building has already begun, and Hunke said it will take some work to straighten out the walls and do some repairs to the roof, but he has high hopes for the building. Hunke purchased the property last year with the intention of turning it into a duplex, but then the provincial government announced $480 million in funding for affordable housing in Ontario over the next four years, which includes $23 million for Waterloo between April 1, 2012 and 2015.

“It’s just one of those things that worked out timing-wise and it worked out very well for us.”

Hunke Construction received approval from Wellesley council to rezone the property from institutional to residential last November, and got final approval for the project earlier this year. The biggest limitation for new construction in Wellesley is the amount of sewage space available, and council assured Hunke there would be no problem securing a second sewage unit, he said. He also said the historical society had no issue with the renovation, stating there was nothing of historical value associated with the building.

The construction company will double as the landlord for the property, and while the final numbers still need to be crunched, Hunke anticipates the rental costs for the four-bedroom will be approximately $700 per month, “which is very, very affordable for an apartment of that size,” he said.

The company is now just awaiting their final permits following the 20-day public consultation period so that they can continue work on the building, and Hunke expects that permit to arrive by the end of the month.

St. Jacobs girl part of U14 ringette squad

When the Elora-Fergus Edge U14 AA girls’ ringette team heads to the Eastern Canadian Championships in Repentigny, Quebec next month, St. Jacobs resident Maddie MacLean, who plays forward for the squad, will be there looking for gold. The team qualified for the tournament after falling to Guelph in the provincial championship finals by a score of 4-0 in Whitby on Mar. 4. The top two teams in the province move on to the eastern championships, the highest level of competition for Maddie’s age group.

“I’m really excited for it and I know that my team is too,” said Maddie, 12, a Grade 7 student at St. Jacobs Public School.

“I’m really happy. I’ve never gotten this far before in ringette, so I’m really excited.”

The tournament brings together the top nine U14AA teams from Eastern Canada, including Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. This is Maddie’s first year on the Elora squad after playing for Waterloo the past seven years. When Waterloo decided not to create a U14 AA team this year, Maddie and five of her Waterloo teammates decided to try out for the Elora-Fergus Edge last May.

The team has excelled this year, going 45-11-3 combined, and winning two golds and four silvers in the six tournaments they have entered. While it’s been a lot of work for Maddie and her family, it’s been worth it, says her mother, Leanne.

“It’s certainly a family commitment, this will be her seventh tournament so there is a lot of travelling and time off of work and school, but she balances it really well with school and her other activities.
“It’s been an exciting season.”

Coach Dave Eccles said the team is well-prepared for the tournament, and are looking forward to an eventual rematch with their rivals from Guelph. “We have high expectations, to be honest. Going in, we feel we have as good a chance as anyone else to win it all.”

Candy kabobs join fight against juvenile arthritis

Arthritis is a painful joint disorder that is typically associated with adulthood, yet in Canada as many as one in 1,000 children and teenagers are afflicted by juvenile idiopathic arthritis. One of those children is St. Clements’ Derek Beam, and the 10-year-old can sometimes spend days at a time at Sick Kids hospital in Toronto receiving joint injections to ease his pain. For the past three years, one of Derek’s classmates at St. Clement Catholic School, Taylor Kelly, has been working to raise money for juvenile arthritis research, and for the month of March, juvenile arthritis awareness month, she is selling candy kabobs to friends, family and schoolmates as part of a group called “Derek’s Destroyers.”

“We’re not going to destroy Derek; we’re going to destroy his arthritis,” laughed the 9-year-old as she sat in her family’s living room earlier this week, surrounded by boxes and bags of candy ranging from sour worms to gummy lips.

She’s already sold more than 100 of her candy creations, and hopes to sell about 200 before the end of the month. She has created a candy kabob workstation in her home, which includes pieces of wood with small holes drilled in them to hold the kabob skewers upright while she assembles them. Taylor has been getting some help from her eight-year-old brother, Cooper, and together they make a pretty good team, creating one kabob every two minutes.
In the past “Derek’s Destroyers” have held garage sales, benefit dances, a day called a Funtastathon modeled after the television show The Amazing Race, and they have also collected pledges to participate in the annual walk to fight arthritis at Bingemans in Kitchener for the past two years.

They’ve collected a little more than $1,000 for arthritis research thus far, but this year they wanted to try something a little bit different. “We wanted it to be fun, but we still wanted there to be enough money to help support Derek, so candy kabobs can be a little more expensive and they’re fun,” said Taylor. The kabobs sell for $4 apiece, or $10 for three.

Derek isn’t the only experience she has had with people suffering from arthritis, though. Her mother, Laura, has it as well as her grandfather, and fundraising has been a part of Taylor’s life for years, according to her mother.
“She’s been raising money since she was in Junior Kindergarten for various causes, but over the past three years it’s mostly been for arthritis,” said Laura. “We’re really proud of her.” Word is spreading about Taylor and her candy kabobs as well; she was featured on a local news channel as one of their local heroes, and orders for kabobs have been pouring in. Nearly everyone at school has put in an order, as well as one boy in Waterloo whose parents ordered 45 for his birthday party instead of loot bags. If business keeps up, Taylor jokes she could go into business for herself.

“I should start my own business, because then it would be even more money for Derek,” she said with a laugh.

For more information on juvenile arthritis visit www.arthritis.ca or to order some candy kabobs email spiceytay@gmail.com.

Reaching out for more

As EDSS student Isaac Frank types in a few commands into the school’s laptop a large orange arm with a mechanical pincher begins to move. Below the arm a conveyor belt turns on as three square objects – one made of wood, one small and metal and one large and metal – head towards a group of sensors. Those sensors indicate what type of object is in front of the arm as it picks each one up and individually sorts them into the proper bins. This pick-and-place robot has been Frank’s and classmates Lewis Hahn’s project for the last seven months, part of their Grade 12 automation electrical class in which they’ve built the robotic arm from the ground up.

“Over the years we have had students build mechanical pop machines, bowling alley sorting machines, and this year the guys built a robotic arm,” said teacher Ron Fletcher. “It was an old robot we had and the guys basically ripped the brains out of it and started from scratch.”

The two students designed and completed the frame and inner workings of the robot while they programmed the arm with hundreds of calculations, allowing it to sense what it was picking up and where it should deposit it.
“They had to design, build and decipher all the motors, inputs and outputs for this robot to work,” said Fletcher. “(Frank) has been here more than anyone else working on this project coming in on snow days, during exams and staying late after school to complete the project.”

Frank said the programming of the robot was harder to complete than the construction.

“There are a lot of little things that take a lot of time to figure out when you are programming,” said Frank. “It is pretty complicated work, but it is just the beginning.”

After each task the robotic arm returns to a home position waiting for the sensors to relay more information. The robot was built with a safety system including an emergency stop and a light fence. The students also built a manual control for the arm and plan to take the robot to the Skills Canada contest in May.

“We like to display these things so that other schools can see what our students are capable of doing,” said Fletcher. “We still have some work to do on the project and some of the bells and whistles still have to go on.”
All the material used to build the robot was donated by Rockwell Automation based in Cambridge.

“We are very pleased that Rockwell has helped out our students for the last few years and they have really helped keep this program running at the level it is at,” said Fletcher. Frank, who is a fifth year student at EDSS, hopes to attend the University of Waterloo in the fall to study electrical engineering.

EDSS runner on track in NYC

Emeka Agada walks down the hallways of Elmira District Secondary School with an air of self-assurance. The fifth-year student says hello to almost everyone he passes, and all of his peers seem to know him by name as well.
His electric smile, high-energy personality and athletic build all convey confidence, and it’s a confidence that is well-earned. In 2008 he burst onto the high school athletic scene by taking the gold medal in the 100-metre event at the 2008 Ontario Federation of Secondary School Athletics provincial finals, and he finished third in the 200 metres.

In the years that have followed he has claimed several more CWOSSA titles and has represented EDSS at more than one OFSAA competition, yet for Agada, that burning desire to achieve success on the field hasn’t always existed.
It was a conversation with his former gym teacher, Ken Lubert from Park Manor school, that truly sparked the fire.

“I always got by with my natural talent and it wasn’t until Grade 8 when Mr.Lubert pulled me aside and said to me, ‘Emeka, you have talent that most people would die for and it makes me sad to see you wasting it.’”
It was that discussion that convinced the now 18-year-old to turn his athletic career around. He starred on the junior track circuit, but knee injuries in Grade 10 and Grade 12 while playing running back for the EDSS football team, have slowed him since.

A year away from the football field though, and a renewed devotion to his craft, has paid off. Last month the 5’11”, 193-pound track star qualified for the 60-metre competition at the New Balance Indoor Nationals in New York City, held Mar. 9-11, with a personal best time of 7.03 seconds.

With approximately 3,000 of the best high school athletes from around the world expected to attend, it is one of the biggest indoor track events in the United States, and has been a breeding ground for future Olympians and world champions for the past 20 years.

This will mark Agada’s first time at the indoor nationals, and he will be travelling with some of his teammates from the Waterloo Region track and field club Supreme Athletics. He admits he didn’t know if he could ever get back to running track following his knee injuries. “I had knee surgery twice. I tore my ACL in Grade 10 and I stretched my other ACL last season.

“Last year I wanted to get back into track but I gained weight and I was really out of shape, and I wasn’t too sure if I could do it again.”

The veteran sprinter said he still gets nervous when he gets into the starting blocks before a race, but uses a mixture of blues, hip-hop and jazz music to calm down beforehand.

“I breathe in and I breathe out,” he said.

“I love B.B. King.”

He also said the 60m competition is a lot different than 100m: “It’s all about the start, and if you don’t have a good start you’re going to lose.”

Agada is using the indoor season to train and prepare for the upcoming outdoor track season, and ultimately his goal is to qualify to compete in the IAAF World Junior Championships in Spain July 10-15, and he would like to qualify for the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto. He also has the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janiero in his sights. “It would be really great to represent Canada.”