A tournament article on the Montgomery tournament by John Ershek is now posted up on the USQRA site, eh!

There is also a photo of most of the Florida Project members up on our summary of the Montgomery tourney, which also indicates the full rosters of all teams.

Ian Chan is the man!

... and has racked up another tournament MVP honour, which is four-in-a-row over the past two months. With a total team effort behind him, all the boys got some good court time against some high level opponents over the weekend, and took home the gold.

The final results and tournament All-Star team from the Capital City Clash have been updated, although the final scores are yet to be confirmed, and won't go up until I speak with Coach Labrecque in the morning.

Cheers!

~Don~

Day 1 Results from Montgomery

... are now posted on the CWSA site, but I'm out the door now to go to the final Ice Bowl of the season, out in the tiny little town of South River, ON, where the minnow races are.

Minnow Races? Yeah, that's what I said too... Maybe I'll get to go dog sledding while winter disc golfing. Who needs electric carts – this is Canada, eh! Hopefully I'll survive the hippy hotel. Gotta run now...

Moving on to Montgomery

We'll have three teams that are involved in our Florida Project down at the Capital City Clash in Montgomery, Alabama, starting tomorrow. These include the #1 seed at the tournament, CANADA ICE, featuring our trio of 3's, the newest edition of the South Florida Rattlers, and Team Europe, which has Swedes, Swiss, and Finnish players in their international roster.

By tomorrow morning I should have also received the rosters from the tournament director, which I'll post to the schedule/results link that I've posted above.

I forwarded the "new" schedule over to John Bishop at the USQRA, so he should have the most recent schedule posted shortly, as there were some changes to the original schedule based on some input from the Tampa and European teams.

~That is all~

COACH EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES

Head Coach and Assistant Coach - Canadian Wheelchair Rugby Team

The Canadian Wheelchair Sports Association (CWSA) is currently seeking qualified individuals to fill the positions of Head Coach and Assistant Coach of the Canadian National Wheelchair Rugby Team.

For more information, check out the files which are available on the front page of the CWSA web site: http://www.cwsa.ca/home.html

Please distribute these job opportunities far and wide throughout your network of sport contacts.

Thank you.

Donald LANE, Program Coordinator
Canadian Wheelchair Sports Association
2460 Lancaster Road, Suite 200
Ottawa, Ontario
K1B 4S5
CANADA

Tel: 1.613.523.0004
Fax: 1.613.523.0149
e: dlane@cwsa.ca

Moving on to Montgomery

Our Florida Project athletes will next be going to the Capital City Clash, which will arguably be the strongest 8-team tournament of the year this season, and will feature a multi-national European team that is presently training with our Florida Project group. A tournament schedule will soon be released, but the Clash will be held on February 18-20.

The Euro team will consist of:

SWI - 0.5 - Andi Braendli
SWI - 0.5 - Christian Haehnel
SWI - 1.0 - Roger Suter
FIN - 1.5 - Antti Koskela
SWE - 2.0 - Stefan Jansson
SWE - 2.5 - Roger Lindberg
SWI - 3.0 Cornel Sonderer

Two Florida Project Teams will attend, which will be supplemented by South Florida Rattler players.

Aside from the Canada Ice, who are seeded 1st at the Clash, th other teams at this high-performance tournament include the Texas Stampede, Phoenix Heat, Hoveround Lightning, South Florida Rattlers, TNT, Tampa Generals, and Team Europe.

Suiting up for Canada Ice at this tournament will be

0.5 - Daniel Paradis
1.0 - Gordie Publicover
1.0 - José Debinito (US)
1.5 - Patrice Simard
3.0 - Ian Chan
3.0 - Fabien Lavoie
3.0 - Mike Whitehead

and the South Florida Rattlers will be represented by:

0.5 - Jared Funk
1.0 - Patrick Rogers (US)
1.5 - Dave Harrison (US)
2.0 - Allan Chartrand
2.0 - Raymond Lizotte
3.0 - Steven Dunn
3.5 - Garett Hickling

Ian Chan will be playing with his home team, the BC Bandits this weekend at the Mile High Massacre, which starts today in Denver, Colorado. He'll be flying back east to suit up for the Ice at the Montgomery tournament.

Speaking of massacres is a good segway to another Murderball review, this time by my favourite wheelchair rugby scribe, Ed Hooper.

~That is all~

Spokes Ableman speaks!

Ed Hooper has penned another fun-reading article on the USQRA web site. Aside from the last second heroics from Chan fan Ableman, my favourite line in the article was:

"Naturally, we must always thank the refs, even the visually challenged ones and those who count by twos."

Regardless of the sport, we've all been there. Refs are people too, 'ya know. After watching the Super Bowl where there were a significant number of flags that were called back to the video booth and overturned, I'm reminded that even at the highest level in a sport, mistakes can and do happen. It is up to the rest of us to help not only athletes develop, but also referees, who need game experience in which to improve, and club practices and training camps can help out both sides of the whistle - so contact your local refs and invite them out!

Question of the day: Why is it that the champions of the National Football League go out of their way to parade themselves off as WORLD CHAMPIONS, especially with all the rah-rah? Nobody else on the planet plays this brand of their mis-named sport! They are LEAGUE CHAMPIONS or NATIONAL CHAMPIONS, but lay off the 'WORLD' label for use by more developed sports.

Rant over. Back to wheelchair rugby, although that may be a natural segway for a mis-named sport, although at least it's better than 'quad rugby' which is a name that excludes many of its eligible players.

You can check out a few articles which have been written about the Tampa and Birmingham tournaments when you get a chance. Bill Renje penned the Tampa article on the recent Coloplast International tournament. I particularly liked the line "The Nordiques built up a four goal, first half lead behind an unmerciful high-point rotation of Tournament MVP Ian Chan, Mike Whitehead, Fabian Lavioe, and Garett Hickling." (Insert evil grin here... heh, heh, heh! :D)

Meanwhile, our Florida Project athletes are going to get a chance to see the highly acclaimed Murderball movie this upcoming Saturday afternoon at the Sarasota Film Festival. They'll have to get there early, as I'm sure Ed Hooper and his Hoveround Lightning players will be jockeying for position in the typically tiny amount of space that theatres offer to wheelchair users. Perhaps we should bring our rugby chairs instead. Just a thought...

It's worth noting that Murderball won two awards at Sundance: one for editing, and another, The American Documentary Audience Award.

~That is all~