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www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Thursday, August 18, 2016 | 38 HALTON TRANSMISSION 559 SPEERS RD., #UNIT 3 905-842-0725 www.haltontransmission.com Kevin Nagel Sports Editor sports@oakvillebeaver.com Sports "Connected to your Community" Sports Briefs Men's hockey sign-up Registration is open for the Oakville and Halton Men's NonContact Recreational Hockey League fall and winter season beginning in October. The league provides divisions for Oldtimers players (27-plus), a Masters Division (40-plus), and a Classics Division (47-plus). Registration can be completed at www.hmhl.bizland.com, by phone at 905-849-9712 or by mail. No complete team entries are allowed, only individual or group registration. All games are played in prime time on player's choice of Sunday mornings, Monday evenings or Wednesday evenings. For details visit www.hmhl.bizland.com. Lakers take six games to eliminate Rock in MSL semifinal play Good things came in threes for the Peterborough Lakers. Peterborough scored three times in three minutes in the third period on its way to a 6-4 win over the Oakville Rock Monday, earning the Lakers a trip to the Major Series Lacrosse final. The win gives Peterborough a 4-2 win in the best-of-seven series as it now moves on to face Six Nations in the final. Dan Lomas had the only goal of the opening period, scoring a power-play marker. Peterborough took the lead with a shorthanded and power-play goal in the second, but the lead didn't last long. Wesley Berg scored 26 seconds later to pull the Rock even. Jeremy Noble and Lomas, with his second of the game, made it 4-2 Oakville but Peterborough got one back with a power-play goal in the final minute of the period. The Lakers carried the momentum into the third, scoring three unanswered goals. Berg had two assists and Nick Rose made 44 saves for the Rock. The Rock tied the series 2-2 with an 8-6 win on the road last Thursday. Rose made 49 saves and Noble and Mitch Desnoo each scored twice. Peterborough regained the series lead Saturday, overcoming a 6-2 deficit to win 10-7. Noble had two goals and three assists and Stephan Leblanc also had five points. Matheson after bronze Oakville's Diana Matheson and her Canadian women's soccer teammates will play for an Olympic bronze medal tomorrow (Friday) at noon against Brazil after losing 2-0 to Germany in a semifinal game Tuesday. Germany will play for the gold against Sweden at 4:30 p.m. tomorrow. Holfrn Cattoni (left) of the Peterborough Lakers chases Oakville Rock's Mitch Desnoo in Game 6 MSL semifinal action Monday. The Lakers won 6-4 to clinch a berth in the league finals.| Jayson Mills ­ Special to the Beaver Van Koeverden inspired many athletes: Canadian coach Scott Oldershaw By Bruce Arthur Toronto Star RIO DE JANEIRO -- When it was over Adam van Koeverden pulled himself from the boat and he tried to smile, and an old friend from Portugal came to give him the kind of hug that shows you mean it. They first met in a race in the Czech Republic in which Fernando Pimenta refused to lead and then passed van Koeverden at the end, and the Canadian cursed him out by name, to which Fernando said angrily, "Nobody except my mother calls me Fernando." They have been friends ever since. Van Koeverden still calls him Fernando, even if nobody else does. So Pimenta embraced the Canadian kayaker, who had just failed to qualify for the final in the men's K-1,000. They have known each other a long time, because van Koeverden has been doing this a long time, and this was the end. "He said, `You were my example,'" said van Koeverden, 34. "He said, `You and Anders (Gustafsson) are my favourite kayakers, and you're my example.' "He knows that I'm probably done." It meant a lot to van Koeverden. It meant more than it used to. When the Toronto native arrived in Athens as a 22-year-old, he boldly proclaimed that he was there to win. In the context of the Canadian Olympic movement at the time, it counted as a brash statement of intent. And then he did. He won his first two medals in Athens, bronze and gold; he won silver in Beijing, and again in London. He would go out fast, force the race, lead. He became a voice for Canada's ambition, for sport, before Own The Podium came around. "He's inspired people in a lot of different sports other than canoe kayak," says Scott Oldershaw, Canada's national team head coach. "Not only the four medals, but his thoughts on life and his thoughts on competition. I think he was one of the first Canadian athletes to publicly say that showing up isn't enough. In Athens he talked about that, that he wasn't there to compete, he was there to win. He alluded a little bit that he was tired of Canadians, saying I just want to do my best. He started people thinking, I want to win medals, and that was a big thing." But by the time London was over, though, van Koeverden wasn't sure he had anything left. At the postworld championships party last year he said goodbye to old friends -- to his pals from Australia, from South Africa, from New Zealand, just in case, you know, he didn't see them again. How far away was he, really, from coming back? "I don't know how to answer that," said van Koeverden, pausing, thinking. "I told my coaches I was done." And then he decided, one more shot. He trained differently, at age 34. Before these Olympics he wrote cards to seven men he felt he needed to thank; to Oldershaw, whom he calls his wizard, he also enclosed a vintage stopwatch as a gift. In the days before this race van Koeverden felt like there wasn't anything left that he needed to accomplish; just one more chance at a medal, and see what happens. And then the semifinal started on a glorious hot sunny day in Rio, and the waves were rolling sideways, and van Koeverden stabbed his paddle into water that wasn't there. He trailed from the start. He said it was no excuse; he tried to hit the gas and catch up, but only the top four advanced. He finished sixth. "Four years ago," said Oldershaw, "that (start) wouldn't have made a difference." There was a B final Tuesday and van Koeverden won it. But this is the end. There is some irony here: van Koeverden is the man who pioneered the hellacious start in kayak, and now everyone does it. And the start, as much as anything, is what sunk the last real race of his Olympic career. "It means maybe I changed the sport a little bit," he said. "Everyone's going out (expletive) hard. You remember the last three Olympics? Not everyone used to do that. People would always say, `Why do you do that?' Because it's my way to win races, because that's the way I try to win races. I grew up watching Steve Prefontaine in those movies, and he's my idol. I used to run the 1,500 and the 5K see Van Koeverden on p. 39