Who would have thought that a little sporting competition that began in 1970 would turn into one of the largest multi-sport events in the world?
2018 marks the 25th hosting of the Arctic Winter Games and it all got underway on Monday in Hay River with the opening ceremonies. The honour of carrying the NWT flag into the new NorthwesTel Arctic Winter Games Recreation Centre fell to TJ Kaskamin of Fort Good Hope, who's playing basketball in Fort Smith.
The action got underway on Monday morning with bantam boys hockey at the brand new arena and Team NT's bantam boys squad got the chance to christen the new surface by taking on Nunavut. It was a successful start as the home team defeated Nunavut, 6-1. Logan Cunningham became the answer to a trivia question for the rest of his life as he scored the very first goal in the arena's new history.
“It's pretty good,” said Cunningham about scoring the first-ever goal. “I wasn't even thinking about it.”
The boys jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead within the first five minutes of the game and were in control for much of the contest.
Coach Shawn Talbot said putting three on the board as quick as they did took a lot of the jitters away.
“Doesn't always happen that way,” he said. “There's been lots of tournaments I've been on where we've had to battle back and try to find ways to win. This time, we got the lead quickly. They battled back hard in the second period so we had to regroup in between periods but we shut them down in the third.”
The one thing people would notice about the ice is the amount of cracks, which didn't affect the game too much although both teams found the ice getting really soft in the second period, making it hard to stickhandle and skate.
“It was challenging,” said Talbot. “The second period slowed the game right down. The puck wasn't moving well and we were having trouble making plays so the scrape in between the second and third periods really helped us out.”
The boys volleyball team wasn't as lucky as they dropped their opening game to Yukon, 3-1 in sets.
Coach Darren Horn said being the first game, it took a bit of time to come together as a team.
“We talked after the game and talked about the importance of coming together as a team,” he said. “We had a lot of unforced errors on our part and we didn't clean up a lot of plays. There's a good chance we'll see them again and we'll be ready for them.”
There was some success for the team on day one on Monday and it came in dog mushing and snowshoeing. Taylor Beck of Hay River won gold in the junior co-ed six-dog 10-kilometre race while Kale Back, also from Hay River, was a silver uluit in the juvenile co-ed four-dog 7.5-kilometre race. Hay River's Trey Beck won himself a silver ulu as well in junior co-ed six-dog 10-kilometre event.
Jed Mitchell of Fort Smith scored himself a silver ulu in the juvenile boys 2.5-kilometre sprint in snowshoeing and Jesse Hanthorn of Fort McPherson won bronze in the junior boys 5-kilometre snowshoe sprint.
Visit the official website of the AWG – awg2018.com – for the complete listing of ulu winners and results.