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When Eli Cole woke up Friday morning, he put on a Wayne Gretzky-designed golf shirt, complete with a stylized Gretzky logo on the front and the Great One’s signature on the sleeve. The American from Beverly Hills, Calif.

NHLer Ryan O’Byrne of Victoria presented a cheque Thursday to Patti Hunter, general manager of KidSport Greater Victoria.

Zack Downey wasn’t with the Victoria Junior Mariners in person on opening day of the sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ Junior Premier Baseball League Championship in Langley on Thursday, but he was never far away.

As the Victoria HarbourCats close out their West Coast League campaign with four head-to-head games against the Bellingham Bells, they might want to heed the words of three-time World Series-winning GM Pat Gillick.

Focus on the here and now, and don’t worry about the last game, or the next game. That’s the message Victoria Shamrocks coach Bob Heyes is getting across to his team these playoff days.

The puck is ready to drop on the Vancouver Island Junior Hockey League season. The Junior B league has scheduled a week of exhibition games, beginning Aug. 25, when the Westshore Wolves drive up the Malahat to visit the Kerry Park Islanders.

Because of the nature of sports played here, there were 48 Island athletes at the 2012 London Summer Olympics while the potential representation for the 2014 Sochi Winter Games rests solely with Jamie Benn.

The beds are strange and the food even stranger. But Joe Hicketts of the Victoria Royals and his Canadian teammates are surviving the vagaries of overseas hockey at the Memorial of Ivan Hlinka U-18 tournament in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

In a wild barn-burner in Burnaby, the Victoria Shamrocks used a dramatic third-period comeback to defeat the Burnaby Lakers 12-11 on Wednesday night.

Camosun College Chargers volleyball coach Chris Dahl certainly knows his way around the sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ Summer Games. Dahl, who guided the sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ men’s team to the bronze medal at the 2009 Summer Games in P.E.I., has coached the sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½