Open minds led to record breaking performances at the North American Indigenous Games.
Okotoks’ Alycia Weber and DeWinton’s Justin Lisoway and the prolific swim team set the pace for Team Alberta with 51 medals in the pool at the 2017 North American Indigenous Games in Toronto.
“It was a really different experience,” said Weber, a Holy Trinity Academy student. “I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but I came out with a bunch of new friends. The chaperones were super nice, the swim team was super supportive.
“By the end of it they were basically like family.”
Team Alberta did so without any centralization prior to the competition.
Winning has a way of bringing people together.
The team tied the previous record with 21 medals through just the first day of competition adding another 30 on day two.
“That was really cool. Going in we didn’t really have any expectations,” Weber added. “It was a pretty small team, we only had 15 people. The first session of the finals went really well and we were all just really supportive.”
The Foothills contingent played a major part in the podium push.
Lisoway took the gold medal in all nine of his races, six individual and three in relay.
Weber, a member of the Foothills Stingrays Swim Club, took home eight gold — 50, 100 and 200m backstroke, 50 and 100m butterfly along with three in relay — as well as silver in the 100m freestyle.
The NAIG meet came on the heels of the end of the long course swim season for the Stingrays one which affords the swimmers just one month of off-season before jumping back into the pool in September.
“That was my last competition of the season,” Weber said. “Leading up to that I was training really hard, but I’m done now.”
Hardcourt Hardware
They weren’t golden memories, but the North American Indigenous Games were one of most rewarding and memorable moments of a young basketball player’s career.
Cevanna Carlson played forward for Team Alberta, which won the silver medal at the North American Indigenous Games in U19 Female basketball in Toronto last week.
“It was a really great time, just to be at the Indigenous Games and to represent Alberta,” said Carlson, who is going into Grade 12 at Foothills Composite High School.
Team Alberta went undefeated until losing to Ontario in the gold medal match 66-59 on July 21. “They had a lot of good three-point shooters,” Carlson said.
She added it was her best game of the tournament.
“I came away with a lot of bumps and bruises — I played hard,” Carlson said.
Team Alberta went 3-0 in the round robin beating Eastern Door and the North, Wisconsin and Nova Scotia.
They played a tough Saskatchewan squad in the semifinals and came out with a convincing 76-28 victory.
“Some of the girls on our team had played against some of their players and we were a little worried,” Carlson said. “But we were able to tire them out.”
She said Team Alberta became a close squad, forming a circle before one of their games to talk about concerns, life goals and other matters other than basketball.
She wasn’t the only Carlson at the Games. Her younger sister Jorja, was a member of the Team Alberta U14 Female squad, which went winless in Toronto.
“She offered me a lot of support,” Cevanna said. “It was important to have my family there.”
Their mother, Leslie Kucey, was the manager of Team Alberta basketball as well as Team Alberta’s registrar and with athletic services.
Cevanna said the experience will only make her a better player for her final year with the defending 4A South Central zone high school champions the Foothills Falcons.
