Like a fever dream without end, an even more surreal 2021 in Island sports followed the landmark bizarreness of 2020. Here are the top 10 stories in Island sports in 2021:
1. OLYMPIC MOMENTS: Against dire predictions and already delayed a year, the Japanese pulled it off in hermetically sealed fashion. Whether you consider that a triumph of the human spirit — a case can certainly be made for that — or a brutal sort of Survival Games, 75 Island or Island-based athletes competed in the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.
Highlights included University of Victoria Vikes rugby great Nate Hirayama carrying the Canadian flag in the opening ceremony, a stunning gold medal performance by the Elk Lake-based women’s rowing eight, bronze by Caileigh Filmer of Victoria and Hillary Janssens in the women’s rowing pair, a clutch hit and bronze medal in softball for Emma Entzminger of Victoria and a surging gold by Nate Riech of Victoria in the Para 1,500 metres.
2. HOOP DREAMS: The qualifying tournament without fans at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre led into an Olympics without fans. The eerie emptiness of the Memorial Centre typified the year as the pandemic restricted fan access over the summer as sa国际传媒’s underperforming Golden Generation of the floorboards again fell short on Blanshard Street. It’s hard to say how different it might have been if buoyed by a home crowd.
3. PACIFIC FC CROWNED: The Island-based pro soccer club completed its three-year march to glory by winning the Canadian Premier League championship in a season littered with memorable achievements, not the least of which was beating the Vancouver Whitecaps of Major League Soccer.
It was part of a big year of soccer breakthroughs in sa国际传媒, with the women’s Olympic gold medal at Tokyo and the male national team’s soaring qualification play, which has it on target for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
4. ROYALS BUBBLE: The Victoria Royals’ 2020-21 season will always have an asterisk beside it. Which is a good thing, considering the rebuilding side was last among the 22 teams. There was a haunting feel to the truncated spring season played without fans in Kamloops and Kelowna. It didn’t really count, but the youthful Royals seemed to have made good use of the experience to gain experience that is proving helpful in their tentative turnaround to start the 2021-22 season.
Not that it has been without cost. The candid Vancouver Giants owner Ron Toigo, on the Donnie and Dhali – The Team Show, said his club “lost north of $1 million” through the pandemic. It can’t be much different for other sa国际传媒 Division clubs, which are now down to half-attendance allowed.
The BCHL also played a shortened 2021 bubble season, admirably and well hosted by Port Alberni, with the Victoria Grizzlies winning the Island Division title.
5. DOUBLE DARK: At least the Royals got a season, such as it was. Some leagues found ways, but circumstances barred others — some for two consecutive seasons.
No Island teams have been hurt more by the pandemic than the Victoria Shamrocks and Nanaimo Timbermen of the Western Lacrosse Association and Victoria HarbourCats and expansion Nanaimo NightOwls of the West Coast League of baseball. Suffering two successive dark seasons is a brutal blow for any organization.
It was also two strikes and out for the 2020 Canadian Little League baseball championship scheduled for Layritz Park and postponed to 2021, the latter also cancelled.
6. RUNNING, SWINGING OUTDOORS: It cheered spirits in the dank fall to see the Spandex-clad set back on the streets in live racing in the Royal Victoria Half-Marathon and 8K and aspiring pro golfers back at Uplands for the Reliance Properties DC Bank Victoria Open golf tournament.
As bad as things got, these doggedly determined organizers found a way. It was another indication that even in the vaccination era there will be setbacks, but there’s no going back to complete sports blackouts.
7. NEWHOOK-GARAND: Former Victoria Grizzlies captain Alex Newhook and goaltender Dylan Garand of Langford won 2021 world junior hockey championship silver with sa国际传媒 last January in empty arenas. Garand was in goal again for sa国际传媒 in the 2022 tournament, which was back in Alberta, but we all know how that turned out this week.
8. THE OTHER HOCKEY: The 2021 world juniors did not even start for the five Island players on the Canadian women’s field-hockey team, which made national headlines by being stranded in South Africa when the Omicron COVID-19 variant suddenly hit and waiting weeks for a flight out following the cancellation of the Junior World Cup.
9. SCHOOLED: Their immediate graduated predecessors in the classes of 2020 and 2021 were robbed of a lifetime of stories to tell and old games to debate for years over beers. But high school sports returned for the Class of 2022 with fall-season sa国际传媒 titles in girls’ volleyball by Mount Douglas, in boys’ soccer by Reynolds and St. Andrew’s, by Ruby Broadbent of Parkland in winning the sa国际传媒 girls’ cross-country championship and in junior varsity football by champion John Barsby.
10. VIKES RESURGENCE: After the dark 2020, UVic got off to a strong start when university sports returned this fall with Vikes teams winning the women’s field hockey nationals and reaching nationals in men’s soccer and rugby and, just like old times, cracking the national top 10 poll in men’s hoops.
