With two days of competition in the books, Yukon teams are still striving to put a check in the win column at the 2017 Canada Summer Games in Winnipeg this week.
At the start of Monday, Yukon’s two basketball teams, the female soccer team and male beach volleyball team are winless, each with a pair of losses.
“I’d actually say it’s going fairly well,” said Yukon female soccer team coach Jake Hanson. “We’ve come with an extremely young team, the youngest team I’ve ever seen for soccer at the Canada Games. We’ve got four or five players in the girls’ side of the tournament that are eligible to play at the next Canada Games in four years … and three of them start for us.
“We’re quite young and need more experience, but the girls are definitely competing.”
Yukon’s soccer squad lost 9-0 to Quebec on July 29 and 6-0 Saskatchewan on July 30.
With the losses Yukon will face N.W.T. on Tuesday. N.W.T. lost 16-0 to Ontario in their first match and 6-0 to P.E.I. in their second.
“The key for us will be creating good scoring chances, finishing our chances, so you might start to see us move stronger midfield players into attacking roles to get goals,” said Hanson. “We’re pretty happy with how our back line is playing. As a tam we’ve kept good structure and shape and have done a lot of things very well.”
(The male soccer competition will take place in week two of the Games.)
Yukon’s male basketball team fell 107-45 to Saskatchewan on July 29 and 122-45 to New Brunswick on July 30.
Yukon’s Ryan Hindson led his team with 26 points against Saskatchewan while teammate Dave Mindanao had nine. Hindson was again Yukon’s top score against New Brunswick with 24 points, including back-to-back three-pointers in the third quarter. Mindanao put nine points on the board and Ian New six.
They will face Quebec this afternoon.
Yukon’s female basketball team has suffered a pair of lopsided defeats so far, losing 98-14 to Nova Scotia on July 29 and 126-2 to Alberta on July 30.
“The previous two losses were tough but the girls played really hard, they played with a lot of tenacity and competed until the end of the game,” said Yukon female basketball team coach Tyler Bradford. “We obviously have some stuff we need to improve — our execution on offence, especially. But we’ve had a couple practices since those games and we’re really looking forward to battling New Brunswick tonight.”
Yukon players Krysha Rubio, Sheridan Curteanu and Nila Stinson each logged four points against Nova Scotia. Maggie O’Conner Brook scored Yukon’s lone basket against Alberta.
The team will next play late Monday afternoon against New Brunswick, who placed first in their pool with wins over P.E.I. and B.C.
Yukon’s first team ever to compete in beach volleyball at the Canada Games has put up a fight so far on the sand.
Max Clarke and Benjamin Grundmanis lost 21-8, 21-12 to Ontario on July 30 and 21-9, 21-9 to Saskatchewan on July 30.
They will face Manitoba on Monday and Newfoundland and Labrador, and New Brunswick, on Tuesday.
The athletics competition starts today with heats in the 100-metre, 400-metre, throwing and jumping events, and more.
Contact Tom Patrick at tomp@yukon-news.com
