With school out for the summer, several University of Winnipeg athletes decided to turn to their provincial sporting organization and represent Manitoba at the 2009 Canada Summer Games (CSG) in Prince Edward Island.

The Canada Summer Games is a two-week multi-sport event, held every four years in a different province.

The U of W had 14 athletes participate in the games, six of whom play on the men’s volleyball team. Returning players Justin Duff, Dan Lother, Marc Ross and Emory Wells, along with first-years Matt Schriemer and Eric Vanderwey, were chosen to be a part of Team Manitoba.

“These six players have been training at a high level for much of the summer. It is great to see our athletes working on their skills in the off-season,” said University of Winnipeg men’s volleyball head coach Larry McKay.

In women’s volleyball, Ariel Smith and Lauren Sears represented their home province, Nova Scotia.

Alix Krahn will be the only female Wesmen on Team Manitoba. Krahn plays middle for the Wesmen and was one of the 20 Wesmen athletes named Academic All-Canadians for the 2008-2009 academic year.

To round off the Wesmen presence on the island, U of W also had six rowers attend the games, including Team Manitoba’s single male sculler, Chris Yachison. He will be entering his second year at U of W this fall, and is majoring in biochemistry.

“Canada Summer Games was an extremely positive experience,” said Yachison.

“It gave me the chance to push myself further not only in sport but also in life. You could tell that the games are filled with many of our future Olympians, politicians and great minds of the future, and just to be surrounded by those individuals was an amazing experience.”

The Games is an opportunity for athletes to grow and in turn help their teams when they come back from competition.

“The hope is that the Games bring insight and perspective to the athletes. Personal development is of utmost importance and growth as an individual is the least that one can expect to come home with from CSG,” Jiggs Araneta, president of Manitoba Post-Secondary Rowing, said in a press release.

“The Games is a stepping stone in the long-term development of the province’s talent pool – by introducing our young athletes to high levels of competition, we gain talent in the university program, which keeps our athletes involved in the sport into their later university years.”
To see complete results of how Team Manitoba did at the Games go to http://www.2009canadagames.ca.

Be sure to catch U of W’s CSG participants playing for the Wesmen this year. Men’s volleyball pre-season starts on Oct. 1 with the Wesmen facing off against Montreal at 7 p.m. in the Duckworth Centre.

Published in Volume 64, Number 1 of The Uniter (September 3, 2009)