The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Sports Oakville Beaver DENTURES COMPLETE DENTURE $ 349 ea. 905-842-8209 LIMITED TIME OFFER SPORTS EDITOR: JON KUIPERIJ Phone 905-845-3824 (ext. 255) Fax 905-337-5567 email sports@oakvillebeaver.com · SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2008 17 Shulaeva back on track By Herb Garbutt OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF Blades drop second straight After Monday's loss to the Hamilton Red Wings, Oakville Blades coach Carlo Coccimiglio said he can accept the odd off-night but hoped it would be a long time before he saw another. While the Blades were certainly more competitive than they were during that 13-4 loss, a loss to the Brampton Capitals in Oakville's next game certainly wasn't what he was looking for. Thursday's 3-2 overtime defeat marked the first in almost four months that the Blades lost consecutive games. Oakville, now 35-6-4, had the only goal of the opening period as Chris Corbeil scored his 15th of the season. Brampton struck for a pair of quick goals midway through the second to take the lead. Josh Ruys tied the game and 33 seconds later Mike Iwanski put the Caps in front. The lead would not last long, though. Scott Judson, who was forced into emergency goaltending duties Monday night, made his contribution at the other end with his first goal of the season. The deadlock remained through the final period and, though Oakville outshot Brampton 3-2 in the extra period, it was Brampton's Sam Nyberg that scored the winner. Despite the loss, the Blades have already wrapped up first place, leading the Provincial Jr. A Hockey League's West Conference by 16 points. That guarantees the team a first-round bye. Coccimiglio believes the down time will help his team. "The first round is a three of five, so it's not like we're going to be sitting for two weeks," he said. The Blades were scheduled to host Mississauga last night and are in Milton tomorrow (Sunday) for a 3:30 p.m. start. The regular season concludes the following week with a pair of games against non-playoff teams, Buffalo and Streetsville. -- Herb Garbutt It has been five years since Oakville's Ekaterina Shulaeva last represented her country. The road from helping Canada to a surprising secondplace finish at the Junior Fed Cup in 2003 to this week's Fed Cup matches in Colombia has been anything but a steady climb. But Shulaeva has battled to regain her place among Canada's best female players. The 20-year-old's tennis career has certainly had its highs -- she won Canadian under-16 and under-18 singles titles as well as a national under-16 doubles championship. "She has always been on track to be one of the top players in the world and the top player in Canada," said Pierre Lamarche, himself a former Canadian Fed Cup player who has coached Shulaeva since she was 11. Parasite was devastating However, there have certainly been lows, including one that nearly derailed her promising career. While competing in Asia she contracted a parasite. In the following months, she lost 27 pounds and developed stress fractures in her feet as the result of weakened bones. It took almost two years, in which Shulaeva played in only a handful of tournaments, to fully recover. They were two critical years for potential development, but last summer she again established herself among Canada's top players. She reached the main draw of her first WTA event last summer at the Rogers Cup in Toronto and looked poised to record her first victory as well. She took the first set from fellow Canadian Marie-Eve Pelletier, 7-5, and looked to be on her way to victory with a 4-1 lead in the second set when things unraveled. Pelletier rallied for a 6-4 win, then maintained the momentum in the final set, winning 6-1. "Going through three rounds of qualifying (to reach the main draw) is no small feat," Lamarche said, "but then that PHOTO COURTESY OF TENNIS CANADA BOUNCING BACK: Oakville's Ekaterina Shulaeva, pictured competing at last year's Rogers Cup WTA event in Toronto, has overcome recent sickness and injuries to re-establish herself as one of Canada's top female tennis players. She is currently in Colombia, playing in the Fed Cup. great feat was pushed aside (by the loss). The loss affected her in many ways but she'll use that next time. It's one of the greatest lessons you can learn." Shulaeva is currently ranked fourth in Canada and 282nd in the world, a ranking Lamarche said may have improved by as much as 100 places had she won her first-round match at the Rogers Cup. Still, Shulaeva continued to show progress. Two months after Toronto, she posted her best-ever finish in a challenger event, a developmental circuit for the WTA. She won three matches, two against higher ranked players, to reach the semifinals in Troy, N.Y. After competing in the Fed Cup, Shulaeva will remain in South America to play in tournaments in Colombia and Chile, then head to Mexico for another competition before returning home. All the tournaments will be played on clay, a surface Lamarche said few North American players take the time to learn to play on. Not only will that add diversity to her game, it will also be a more forgiving surface as she continues to recover from the stress fractures in her feet. "It's great she's getting to play a lot of tennis," Lamarche said. "She's so young experience-wise compared to most of the players her age." But if anyone can overcome that lack of experience, Lamarche is sure his prized student is the one. "She's the most disciplined athlete I've ever coached," he said, "and I've coached a lot. It's just a matter of time before she blossoms." Canada is in a pool with Mexico and the host Colombians. Pool winners will advance to the final and the top team will advance to World Group II play in April.