TUESDAY AUG 21ST
9:00-10:30am GAME 3, Teams 2 vs 3
10:45-12:15pm GAME 4, Teams 1 vs 4
1:30-2:30pm GOALIE SESSION: ALL GOALIES
4:00-5:30pm GAME 5, Teams 2 vs 4
5:45-7:15pm GAME 6, Teams 1 vs 3
If you missed the interview with Kevin Willison and Adam Hayduk yesterday, give it a listen by clicking HERE.
As always all audio is courtesy and copyright 93.3 The Peak FM and the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group, LP.
For more media coverage, check out Scott McKenzie's piece on Training Camp from the Alberni Valley Times by clicking HERE
Bruce talked on the mic Saturday
about his win and couldn't have said it more poetically, ( I'm
paraphrasing but I'm close)
"as the head pro you lose if you win
because you are the pro, and you lose if you don't win, because you are
supposed to win because you are the pro".
He
showed how big of a beauty he was as he then in turn took the financial
winnings and gave them right back to the team in the form of winning a
silent auction item as he put 100% of the winnings on the sheet, beating
the previous high bit by $150 or so!
He killed
two birds with one stone as he won the "VIP Bulldog Game Experience"
that he said he plans to use to get people to a Bulldog game that might
not have the means to make it happen otherwise! Very cool!
Tom McEvay with Carol Huynh who won Bronze in London and Gold in Beijing!
Here is the final installment in our series of
articles covering our Alberni Wrestling European Tour 2012. It was an
amazing 3 weeks that none of us will ever forget. For many of the youth
on this trip I do not believe it is an understatement to say it was a
life changing experience.
Thanks to everyone who supported this project and helped make it a reality.
Tom
Alberni Valley Wrestling Club European Tour 2012
The Alberni Wrestling contingent
returned home Sunday evening from our European tour tired but full of amazing
memories and positive emotions. This article traces the last portion of our
trip from St. Moritz, to Vaduz and Paris and then the final stop in London.
Thanks to tour member Tom Weegar for penning most of this article.
Round three of the Alberni Valley
Wrestling Club’s tour of Europe continued with travel from St. Moritz,
Switzerland, to Vaduz, the capital of Leichtenstein. To get there, the group’s tour bus had to
navigate the 2,284 m. Julier Pass.
The Julier Pass was magnificent! Starting with a number of steep switch-backs
on the St. Moritz side, we ascended to a beautiful sub-alpine plateau area,
surrounded on both sides by sentry-like granite peaks of the Alps, each lined
with avalanche fences to keep the highway open in winter and Spring. Once on the other side of the Julier Pass, we
started a serpentine descent towards Lichtenstein.
Leichtenstein is a tiny mountain country
located in the Alps right next to Switzerland. I say ting because the whole
country is only about 25 kms in length. Vaduz is its capital city. It too is
quite small but it is a beautiful city
and we had the opportunity to spend some free time exploring its many historic sites.
After shopping and sight-seeing in Vaduz
the AV Wrestling Club visited the village of Gamprin for the first ever
international wrestling match in Leichtenstein.
The club wrestled in a beautiful outdoor, yet covered, wrestling stadium
which was part of a larger recreational complex. That complex included a
man-made lake and swimming area, an outdoor basketball court, an outdoor tennis
court, and a terrific playground for children.
Despite being in their off season and
comprising wrestlers of all levels of experience the Alberni wrestlers gave a
strong and spirited showing in their individual wrestling matches as they did
all trip. Their opponents were from various Swiss clubs in the surrounding area
and were all very experienced and in excellent wrestling shape. Alberni’s top performances were turned in by
Michael Cappus, Riley Neville, Cullen Hines, Cody McEvay and Dusty Cadwallader.
After wrestling our Swiss friends hosted us for a lovely dinner and social. It
was an excellent event and the Alberni group made many friends.
The following morning the group were up
at 4 am and travelled by bus from Leichtenstein to Zurich, Switzerland, to
catch a train to Paris. The train was a
high-speed bullet train that reached speeds of up to 300 km/hr. The entire trip took about five hours and was
incredibly scenic although many in the group slept most of the way.
Arriving into Paris was very
exciting! After a bus tour on the day of
our arrival the group had an opportunity to take the metro to the famous Notre
Dame Cathedral and the exciting Latin District of Paris. The following day was
full of sightseeing and some free time. The day included visits to the Louvre
(the world’s largest museum!) and the Eiffel Tower. Seeing the Eiffel Tower up close was very
impressive – exploring the Tower and going to the top was even more impressive
and an experience of a lifetime!
After a couple of days in Paris, we
boarded the Eurostar train and travelled from Paris to London under the English
Channel via the Chunnel. We arrived in London and had lunch and checked into
the Clink 78 Hostel which would be our home base in Kings Cross for the next 5
nights. That afternoon we had a bus tour of London on a double decker bus. All
of us crammed into the open air top floor of the bus and had a fabulous time
seeing the sights.
London was of course the site of the
2012 Olympics. These Olympics were the third Olympics for London, the others
occurred in 1908 and 1948. In London,
members of our group had the opportunity to see men’s and women’s wrestling,
taekwondo, handball and track & field.
We had the opportunity to watch some of the best athletes in the world
perform at their respective sport and it was a very fulfilling experience for
all Alberni travelers.
No doubt one of the trip highlights was
the first wrestling session in women’s freestyle at the Excel Centre where most
of our 40 member group attended decked out in red and white, tattooed, chanting
and flag waving. The spirit of the Olympics was very apparent in London and our
group certainly added to that spirit. Being there that day to see former BC
high school wrestler and SFU grad Carol Huynh capture a bronze medal was very
special.
During our stay in London members of the
group took full advantage of free time to visit their incredible museums, the
Tower Bridge, Big Ben, the Tower of London, shopping in Picadilly Square,
Covent Garden, Oxford St and so much more. One day over half the group
travelled to the famous Stonehenge and the ancient Roman city of Bath. The
Irish Olympic House became a favourite stop for many of the adults in the
group.
While the European tour and the Olympics
were thrilling for our group members from our youth to the adults, the trip was
tiring and many of our members looked forward to coming home to the beautiful
Alberni Valley and enjoying Sproat Lake in the heat of the summer. All our group members, however, will have
many, many amazing memories of Prague, Munich, Salzburg, Innsbruck, St. Moritz,
Leichtenstein, Paris, and London as well as the villages where we wrestled. Some are already contemplating the next
international tour for the local club but as Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, “there’s no place like
home.”
That's it for now!
Hammer
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