Winter Games - Comraderie

One of the fun things about the Winter Games is the people you get to hang out with. When you are a Coach or Manager, pretty much your whole time at the Games is spent with your team (unless you have Mission Staff like me who don't mind taking a shift supervising; I watched the kids with the Manager while the Coaches went to watch a Ringette game). The Coaches and Managers are the ones responsible for the kids 24/7, so when the kids go to bed, the Coaches and Managers go to bed.

Mission Staff, on the other hand, go out to party.

Every night there is an Adult Lounge set up, where Mission Staff, volunteers, and the general public are able to get together and unwind. There is a bar and a live band, and most importantly smokies are served too. Not every region sees their Mission Staff go to the nightly party, but Interlake is usually a, well, strong presence at the event.

I only went 2 of the nights I was there, mostly because I didn't want to be left out (the 2nd night I thought I'd be a sport and be the DD for everyone else). I don't drink, so usually this kind of atmosphere has no appeal to me. However, the music was really good, and the people I was hanging out with are all good people.

Interlake really had a great Mission Staff team; I knew about half of them prior to the Games, but we all gelled into a group very quickly. Nobody got stupidly drunk or anything, let me make that perfectly clear. Everyone that drank was responsible, nobody became unruly, and we had a pretty good time.

I do get a chuckle out of the fact I was driving around with and hanging out with an old University budy...of my Dad's! Fred, our Curling team Mission Staff, used to be really good friends with my Dad in University, but it was me cruising down to the bar with him!

Manitoba Winter Games

I'm back from the Manitoba Winter Games, and was it ever a great experience. I don't know if I can get everything I want to touch on in one post, but let's see how we fare.

The Games are a huge undertaking; until attending I didn't realize how big. There were approximately 1400 athletes participating in the Games, though all were not present at once; the Games are divided into two phases, so there were about 7-800 athletes present at a time. Over 1000 volunteers gave of their time and energy to run the games, and they did a fantastic job.

I was part of the Team Interlake contingent as Mission Staff for the badminton team. Basically, I handled all of the non-sport logistics stuff so the coaches and managers could focus on the sport stuff. It's actually extremely similar to being support staff at BCBC.

We had a team of 16 badminton players, and man, did we ever have a great group of kids. Well behaved, level headed, and for the most part really there to compete. Other than one kid I never had any worries about what the badminton players were up to.

Team Interlake finished fourth in the overall medal standings (Eastman beat us out by 1!), but second in gold medals. I think that's a great result for our region, considering all the advantages the Winnipeg teams have.

I don't want this post to get too long, so I'll probably do a couple of posts over the week detailing different aspects of my Games experience.