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Pa ge 4 0 T hu rs da y, A pr il 9, 2 01 5 - T he IF P - H al to n H ill s - w w w .th ei fp .c a SPORTS 'It's been a long time coming.'-- High jumper Sean Cate... see below'Quoteunquote' Gergely vies for Sutherland Cup Georgetown's Kevin Gergely is about to get a taste of the Sutherland Cup playoffs as his Elmira Sugar Kings compete for Greater On- tario Jr. B Hockey League supremacy. In front of more than 1,500 spectators at the Dan Snyder Memorial Arena in Elmira last week, the Sugar Kings skated past the Stratford Culltions 5-1 to win the best-of-7 Midwestern Conference final series in five games and hoisted the Cherrey Cup. The top-ranked Sugar Kings will now play the fourth seed and Wild Card LaSalle Vi- pers in the best-of-7 semifinal, which began Wednesday evening in Elmira. The 18-year-old Gergely was a late-season pickup from the Listowel Cyclones and has fit in nicely with the first-place Sugar Kings, who last went to the Sutherland Cup in 2011. Gergely notched his only goal in a dozen playoff starts in the third period of Elmira's 5-4 comeback victory in game four in Strat- ford, then missed on a penalty shot a cou- ple of minutes later. At 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, Gergely graduated from Christ the King Secondary School and the Halton Hur- ricanes' AAA minor program. In the other Sutherland Cup semifinal, the Golden Horseshoe Conference-cham- pion Caledonia Corvairstake on the Western loop-winning Leamington Flyers. Guelph Gryphon and local native Sean Cate clears the bar at 2.13m to win the gold medal at last month's CIS track & field championships at the University of Windsor. Submitted photo He's only been high jumping competitively for two years, yet Georgetown's Sean Cate felt he had to make a statement heading into last month's Ontario and subsequent Canadian university track and field championships. The former high school basketball standout came through by winning both events, capped off with a personal-best jump of 2.13 metres to capture the gold medal at the Canadian Inter- university Sport Track & Field Championships at the University of Windsor. "It's been a long time coming," said the third-year political science major, who will soon take his LSAT tests in order to get into law school. "At this point, I almost expected out of myself that I was going to win and going into it I put myself in a position of feeling like I re- ally needed to win. High jump is kind of a non- chalant sport in that you don't feel like you're competing against each other, so I put that in- ternal pressure on myself to really do well and it worked." The 6-foot-5 Cate, who turns 21 next month, didn't compete in his first year at Guelph after he shocked coaches in an impromptu tryout with the Speed River Track & Field Club by clearing 2.06m in basketball shoes. Slowly improving on his technique under the guidance of the Speed River and Gryphons' coaches, Cate won with a 2.10m clearance at the OUA Championships at York University just before the CIS meet and needs to reach the 2.15m mark in competition over the next few weeks in order to qualify for the Summer Uni- versiade World Games in South Korea in July, something he feels is an attainable height since he'll be finished with exams this week. The Pan-Am Games held here in southern Ontario are also a possibility, but Cate said the Summer Universiade is a more realistic goal. Kevin Gergely got to take a lap around the ice with the Cherrey Cup after the Elmira Sugar Kings won the Midwestern Conference Jr. B championship on home ice. Submitted photo Cate leaps to OUA, CIS titles McNiven nets OHL GAA award Goaltender Michael McNiven's rookie sea- son came to an end over the week- end after his Owen Sound Attack was eliminated from the Ontario Hockey League's Guelph Storm in five games, but the Georgetown na- tive has some hardware to show for his first year in the Scenic City. The 17-year-old former George- town Jr. A Raider earned the F.W. 'Dinty' Moore Trophy for having the best goals-against average (2.79) amongst rookie netminders during the regu- lar season as he posted a 15-8-0-0 record with a .914 save percentage. McNiven, at 6-foot-1 and 210 pounds, was listed sixth among North American goalies by NHL Central Scouting in its mid-term rankings for the 2015 NHL Draft. He didn't see any action in the playoff series with Guelph, giving way to vet Jack Flinn. Another local native, Guelph cap- tain Jason Dickinson, picked up three goals and two assists in the series against Owen Sound. MICHAEL MCNIVEN The TORONTO 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games are coming! Metroland Media Group is proud to be the official print and online media supplier. Watch for exclusive coverage in your community as we count down to the largest multi-sport event ever in Canada.