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www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Wednesday, January 29, 2014 | 10 Oakville-trained figure skaters finish in top five at nationals Figure skaters who train in Oakville posted top-five finishes at the recent Canadian Tire National Skating Championships in Ottawa. Alaine Chartrand earned a spot on the national team with a fifth-place finish in senior women's competition, while the team of Ashlynn Stairs and Bradley Keeping-Myra placed fifth in novice dance. The 17-year-old Chartrand is an Ottawa-area native who travels to Oakville each weekend to train under Skate Oakville competitive director Michelle Leigh, whose past proteges have competed in three Olympic Winter Games. Chartrand's performance did not earn her a spot in next month's Olympics in Sochi, but she did represent Canada at last week's ISU Four Continents Championship in Chinese Tapei. Stairs, 13, and Keeping-Myra, 15, recently relocated from Barrie to train with Skate Oakville competitive dance director Mark Bradshaw and coaches Deb Lee, Carolyn MacCuish and Karolina Paliwoda. The team, which qualified for the Canadian championships with an eighth-place finish at the Skate Canada Challenge last month in Regina, was fourth after pattern dances and fifth after free dance in its first appearance at nationals. Other skaters who train in Oakville and competed at the Canadian finals were Marika Steward (18th, senior women), Maysie Poliziani (13th, junior women) and Keiko Marshall (15th, junior women). Poliziani and Marshall represent the Hamilton Skating Club and Steward represents North Bay Figure Skating Club. Skate Oakville will send a large contingent of skaters to the Skate Canada Central Ontario STARSkate Championships Feb. 14-16 in Brampton. Competitors at that event will be attempting to qualify for the Skate Ontario STARSkate Championships in March. The club's synchronized skating teams will compete at regionals early next month, and the novice and senior teams will travel to Burnaby, B.C. to compete at the Skate Canada Synchronized Skating Championships Feb. 21-23. Ashlynn Stairs and Bradley Keeping-Myra were fifth in novice dance at the recent national championships. | photo submitted Two gold for Van Beilen at CIS meet The Oakville bantam A Rangers Red team went undefeated in four games to win a hockey tournament in Chicago earlier this season. Tera Van Beilen won two gold medals Sunday on the final day of the Canada West swimming championships in Calgary, helping the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds women's team win its fifth straight conference title. Sports Briefs Van Beilen was named to the all-Canada West women's team after earning five medals at the meet. Oakville's Reid Scarrow, swimming for the University of Calgary Dinos, was named to the all-Canada West men's team. Van Beilen, a King's Christian Collegiate graduate, beat Fiona Doyle of the University of Calgary by more than 1.5 seconds to win the women's 200-metre breaststroke in a time of 2:24.35. Later, she helped the UBC 4x100m medley relay team take the gold easily in a time of 4:03.66. Van Beilen earned a bronze medal Saturday in the 100m breaststroke, one-tenth of a second behind the race winner. She was edged at the wall in the 50m breaststroke as well, finishing second by five one-hundredths of a second, and earned a bronze medal in the 4x100 individual medley. Scarrow helped Calgary earn a gold medal in the 4x200m freestyle relay. Swimming the Shorthanded bantams win title in Chicago Versatility of its players enabled the Oakville bantam A Rangers Red hockey team to win the championship at the Chicago Thanksgiving AA Classic earlier this season. Ben Schledewitz and Spencer Smith scored goals to lift the Rangers to a 2-1 win over the Orland Park Vikings in the final. Oakville was playing with a short bench due to injuries suffered in league play and the tournament, and several players had to play out of position. "We are fortunate to consistently have strong goaltending and to have a handful of players who play both forward and defence in different situations during a game," said Rangers head coach Kevin Schledewitz. Oakville doubled up the Romeoville Huskies 4-2, tied Orland Park 3-3 and whipped the Southern Illinois Ice Hawks 8-2 in its other three games at the competition. Also contributing to the title win were Rick Schutte, Adam Grace, Nicholas Dupuis, Noah Gibson, Justin Lyttle, Adam Farley, Francis Guay, Geoff Marchioli, Aidan Iaboni, Bryan Watson, Jack Guimaraes, James Rieckhof, Jordan Dearsley, Devon Wilson and Ryan Menne. Dave Grace and Jeff Gibson also coach the team, and Bruce Watson is the trainer. anchor leg, the Iroquois Ridge grad entered the water trailing by more than a second and a half. He reeled in UBC's Jonathan Brown and the two touched the wall in a dead heat. Their time of 7:16.88 broke the Canada West record established in 2002 by a UBC team that included Olympians Brent Hayden and Brian Johns. Speed skaters make impressive debuts Zachary Maynard and Isabella Zakatsiolo both won medals in their competitive speed skating debuts earlier this month in Milton. Maynard claimed gold and Zakatsiolo received bronze at the Western Regional meet, where Oakville Speed Skating Club members made up more than a quarter of the 142-skater field. Other medal winners from Oakville were Charlie Cotton, Hunter Semple, Alina Santos and Samuel Mathew (gold), Spencer Skeete and Austin Pavao (silver), and Noelle Agaiby and Sherise Gratton (bronze). Top-six finishers included Brittany Pan, Ivan Worona, Manu Kadalayil, Jaden Lo, Alex Giannotti, Marcelo Giansante, Frank Feng, David Hinton and Jonathon Caron. Pan achieved a personal milestone by skating the 500 metres in under one minute (59.42 seconds). Overall, Oakville speed skaters combined to set 70 personal bests at the meet. OAKVILLE BLADES VS. AURORA TIGERS Friday, January 31st OAKVILLE BLADES VS. ST. MICHAELS BUZZERS Saturday, February 1st Sixteen Mile Sports Complex · Puck Drops at 7:30pm Adults $7, Students/Seniors $5, Kids FREE LOCAL JUNIOR A HOCKEY AT ITS BEST!