Lac St. Louis ready to tackle Quebec Games

BY MICHAEL PIASETZKI

The 40th annual Quebec Winter Games, a highly skilled well-organized sporting event many participants will remember for the rest of their lives, begins this weekend in Repentigny.

Teams representing regions from all over the province — including 149 athletes from Lac St. Louis, of which 75 are from the West Island — will march proudly during the opening ceremonies.

The eight-day event will be divided into two four-day blocks, with the first beginning on Saturday and wrapping up on Tuesday. It will feature curling, gymnastics, women’s hockey, cross-country skiing, ping-pong, karate, fencing, weightlifting and diving. The second block, which will feature badminton, judo, figure skating, speed skating, ringette, bowling, alpine skiing, taekwondo, synchronized swimming and handball gets underway a day later and ends on March 10.

“The bus with the first group of local athletes leaves Friday at 2 p.m. sharp outside the Dollard des Ormeaux Civic Centre,” said Lac St. Louis Sports Commission director general Jacques Chapdelaine. “Our athletes will be accommodated in a high school and will be well taken care of. We’re looking forward to a good performance.”

While the athletes made last-minute preparations for the Games, more than a ripple of concern wavered through the commission last week. That’s because a good chunk of government funding totalling around $12,000, most of which goes towards covering athletes’ transportation costs to the Games, had not yet been received. However, the Unité Regionale de Loisir et Sport (URLS), an administrative body in charge of distributing the money, finally did send the money to Chapdelaine on Thursday afternoon.

“The URLS is trying to put its hands on money that has nothing to do with leisure and everything to do with sport,” said Yvan Dallaire, a member of the Lac St. Louis Sports Commission board of directors. “It’s become a major issue. After the Games are over, we have to sit down and figure out how to work together with the URLS or how to become more involved in order to protect what we have as far as money is concerned.”

Money issues aside, Lac St. Louis will be looking to equal or improve its performance at the 2005 Quebec Games in St. Hyacinthe, when it captured 10 gold, seven silver and five bronze medals.

Highlights of those Games included the first time in the history of the Games a Lac St. Louis girl’s hockey team won gold, an underdog ringette club that defied the odds by playing defensively and inspirationally capturing gold and a women’s curling crew that lost a heartbreaker in the final.

Games notes: The Canada Winter Games began on last Friday in Whitehorse, with several area athletes seeing action. In men’s hockey, Kirkland’s Louis Leblanc, a rookie forward for the Quebec Midget AAA Lac St. Louis Lions, scored twice to lead Quebec to a 9-0 win over the host Yukon on Saturday.

On Monday, Quebec beat Nova Scotia 5-2 with no local players hitting the score-sheet. Meanwhile, Notre Dame de L’Île Perrot’s Cortney Keeble scored six times and added two assists to help Quebec register consecutive preliminary round wins over Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, British Columbia and Ontario.