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36 Sports Oakville Beaver SPORTS EDITOR:JONKUIPERIJ Phone 905-845-3824 (ext. 432) Fax 905-337-5571 email sports@oakvillebeaver.com · THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012 Atom Hornets win provincial girls' hockey championship By Jon Kuiperij BEAVER SPORTS EDITOR JON CLARKE / SPECIAL TO THE OAKVILLE BEAVER BOUND FOR BRAZIL: Burloak Canoe Club member Alanna Bray-Lougheed will compete in her first major international paddling competition this week in Rio de Janeiro. The 19-year-old hopes to return to Brazil in four years for the 2016 Olympics. Burloak paddler setting sights on 2016 Games By Herb Garbutt OAKVILLEBEAVERSTAFF With the London Games a little more than three months away, Canadians will soon be swept up in a wave of Olympic spirit. Alanna Bray-Lougheed will be among those cheering on Canadian athletes, and she will be doing so with an eye toward four years from now. The 19-year-old will compete in her first major international competition this week after being named to the Canadian team for the Pan Am Canoe Championships in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which just happens to be the site of the 2016 Olympics. "I'm definitely thinking about the Olympics in four years," she said. "Being around the (Burloak) Canoe Club and seeing Adam (van Koeverden), Mark Oldershaw and Brady (Reardon) and all the guys on the national team and what they are doing on the same water that you're training on, you can't help but think about it. I'm going to take it year by year, but it is a goal of mine." Bray-Lougheed started paddling nine years ago when her mom saw a notice in the Oakville Beaver and signed her up -- coincidentally, the same way three-time Olympic medalist van Koeverden got his start. Though she initially had no ambitions to race competitively -- "It was just fun to hang out with my friends," she said -- she eventually progressed from the Canoe Kids program to the recreational program and four years ago joined Burloak's high-performance program. Though she may have joined the program a little later than most, Burloak head coach Adam Oldershaw said last year was a breakthrough for Bray-Lougheed. She won the junior K-1 (kayak singles) 200m at national team trials and, though she missed out on her goal of making the Canadian team for junior worlds, her hard work was rewarded. "She developed a little later in the year but that momentum carried her through," Oldershaw said. "In some ways, missing junior worlds wasn't the worst thing. The work she did preparing for that is what set her up to achieve this." Bray-Lougheed has already enjoyed plenty of success, winning 10 gold medals over the past three national championships and helping Burloak claim the Canadian title each time. Wanting to see where the sport might lead her, BrayLougheed took a year off school after graduating from T.A. Blakelock. She earned her spot on the Pan Am team in trials held during a 10-week training camp in Florida with the national development team. Having competed at nationals and trained alongside Canada's senior team in Florida, Bray-Lougheed is now anxious to see how she measures up on the international stage. "I'm looking forward to seeing all the other competitors from the different countries and how we compare and how we can improve to be on the podium," BrayLougheed said before leaving for Brazil on Monday. Bray-Lougheed considers her best event the K-1 200-metre, though it was a 1,000m trial she used to qualify for Pan Ams, which begin tomorrow (Friday). She is tentatively scheduled to compete in the K-1 200m and 500m as well as the K-2 500m. Regardless of the events she competes in, Oldershaw has no doubt it will help kickstart her international career. "It's a pretty huge step," he said, "but anyone I know who has gone has come back fired up. Once you do it, you want to do it again and again." -- Herb Garbutt can be followed on Twitter at @Herbgarbutt The Ontario Women's Hockey Association (OWHA) provincial championships were right around the corner, and the Oakville atom A Hornets did not seem to be at all ready. "We won a tournament in London (the team's third straight tournament gold after starting the season with a silver in Oshawa), and the girls went flat after that," head coach Steve Lester recalled. "We lost to Kitchener in the semifinals of our league playoffs, and we were trying to figure out ways to reinvigorate the girls." Lester and his coaching staff tried one of the oldest tricks in the book, shaking up the lines. Lester also arranged for several past and present members of the Canadian women's hockey team to meet with the Hornets and provide some inspiration. But perhaps what the Hornets simply needed most was to be on the biggest stage of the year. Oakville shook out of its late-season doldrums in a big way last weekend at provincials, winning all six of their games by a combined score of 15-2 to become the first Hornets atom A team to win an OWHA championship. "Maybe it was putting the lines back together. Maybe it was the Olympians. Or maybe it was just the excitement of (a big) tournament," Lester said. "The girls worked incredibly hard during the year, absorbed all the development we could give them, and executed to perfection when called upon and when it meant the most." Three games in eight hours Though the aggregate score at provincials appears lopsided, not much came easy for the Hornets at provincials. Three of their six wins came by one-goal margins, including a 2-1 overtime decision over Cambridge in the championship game. The contest against Cambridge was also Oakville's third game in an eight-hour span. The Hornets were the only atom team that had to play three games on Sunday, thanks primarily to a 13-overtime game that took place the previous day and backed the schedule up. "We protested it... but we lost that negotiation," Lester said. The Hornets began Sunday with a 6-0 rout of Stratford, then edged Scarborough -- the Lower Lakes Female Hockey League champions -- 1-0 to See Hornets, page 37