sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½

Midfielder Thomas Shores was in high school, at St. Josephs in Edmonton, when he was called on to make his international debut at a tournament in Slovakia with four games with sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½â€™s U-18 team.

The Sweet 16 proved just that over the Malahat in the senior men’s Province Cup soccer playoffs as Cowichan FC and Nanaimo United advanced. But it was not so much sweet, as sour, south of the ’Hat as Gorge FC, Lakehill and Vic West all fell.

The friendly confines of Westhills Stadium can’t come soon enough next month for the Langford-based Canadian women’s rugby sevens team.

CASTAWAY WANDERERS 45 UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA 37 Saturday afternoon at Windsor Park was the antidote for what ails Canadian rugby.

There are so many interconnections between the Castaway-Wanderers and University of Victoria Vikes that it’s become a kind of rugby family feud. The teams renew their rivalry today at 2:30 p.m. in an all-Island first-round matchup of the sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½

It was a downhearted Langford-based Canadian women’s sevens rugby team that left Gold Coast, Australia, last weekend without a medal in the 2018 Commonwealth Games. The ambitions were much greater after winning bronze in the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics.

The Gordon Head Baseball Association pitched the idea and then hit it out of the park. The association is among 16 from across the country — and the only one from sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ — chosen for Blue Jays Care Foundation Field of Dreams grants this year.

Gorge FC hopes to reprise old times in the Province Cup, when it won four sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ men’s senior soccer championships between 2001 and 2010.

Both the Kelowna Rockets and Kamloops Blazers have held splashy news conferences announcing their intentions to bid for the 2020 Memorial Cup, the latest being the Rockets on Thursday in the Okanagan after the Blazers back in November.

The Surf sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ Nationals, featuring the newest Olympic sport, come crashing in with the breakers May 4-7 at Wickaninnish Beach.