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

Sports Oakville Beaver SPORTS EDITOR:JONKUIPERIJ Phone 905-845-3824 (ext. 432) Fax 905-337-5571 email sports@oakvillebeaver.com · THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2012 29 Reversal of fortunes WILDCATS DOWN DEVILS: White Oaks Wildcats player Will Wiltshire (with ball) surges past a fallen Oakville Trafalgar Red Devils opponent last Thursday at White Oaks. The Wildcats blanked Oakville Trafalgar -- the Halton champions in 40 of the past 41 years -- by a 10-0 score, handing the Red Devils their second loss in three games to start the high school senior boys' rugby season. PHOTO COURTESY RUGBYPHOTO.COM Young Loyola baseball squad still manages to get best of Irish By Herb Garbutt OAKVILLEBEAVERSTAFF Van Koeverden locks down Olympic spot Burloak Canoe Club paddler Adam van Koeverden has met the selection criteria for the Canadian Olympic team. Van Koeverden won the men's K-1 (kayaking singles) 1,000metre race last week at the Canadian Sprint Team Trials in Lake Lanier, Georgia. Paddling with a headwind, the Loyola grad crossed the line in 3:47.6. Steven Jorens of Lac Beauport, Que. was second in 3:51.9, and Burloak teammate Brady Reardon of Burlington finished third in 3:54.5. "I had a good race today," van Koeverden said. "It was my first race of the year, so there's lots of fine tuning to do. I'm going to sit down with my coach now and talk to him about what to work on for training." The next action for van Koeverden will be two World Cup events in Europe -- May 18-20 in Poznan, Poland and May 25-27 in Duisburg, Germany. "These races are important for me -- just more indications of what I should work on for the final eight or seven weeks of preparation before London. Really, I'm just focused on London," van Koeverden said. Burloak's Mark Oldershaw and Aaron Rublee have much more to gain from the upcoming World Cup events, as both attempt to nail down spots on the Canadian Olympic team. Oldershaw, a Burlington resident is currently battling Dartmouth, N.S. native Ben Russell for the Olympic spot in the C-1 (canoeing singles) 1,000m event. Oldershaw bested Russell by 1.4 seconds at Canadian trials. Rublee, originally from Kamloops, B.C., hopes to beat out Dartmouth's Jason McCoombs in C-1 200m competition. Rublee also won his Canadian trial race over McCoombs. Since Oldershaw and Rublee won their trials races, they would need to finish ahead of their Canadian challengers in at least one of the two World Cup meets. Russell and McCoombs would have to be the top Canadian in both races in order to claim spots on the Olympic team. Burloak's Chris Mehak and teammate Philippe Duchesneau of Montreal hope to earn an Olympic spot in the men's K-2 (kayaking doubles) 1,000m. The team finished second at Canadian trials and needs to be the top Canadian crew at both World Cup races in order to make the Olympic team. Other local paddlers scheduled to compete at the World Cup meets are Reardon, Kathleen Fraser and Mallorie Nicholson. Reardon will compete in the men's K-1 1,000m, 500m and 5,000m races at the World Cup meets, while Nicholson hopes to defend her world championships in the women's C-1 and C-2 events. Fraser, an Oakville native who paddles for Balmy Beach, will race in women's K-1 events at the World Cup meets as she prepares for the under-23 world championships later this year. The World Cup races will be televised on Sportsnet. The coaches for both the Loyola Hawks and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish say they would be happy to just make the playoffs. That may seem a little odd coming from the two teams that have met in the Halton baseball final in each of the last three years. But there's a good reason for their modest outlooks. Loyola, last year's champion, lost eight starters from last year's team. Notre Dame had a similar exodus the previous year after winning the Halton title and has just two Grade 12s on the team this season. Even if they aren't battling one another for the championship this year, Loyola and Notre Dame added another chapter to their diamond rivalry Thursday. Loyola won 5-4 on a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the seventh after Notre Dame rallied from a 4-0 deficit to tie the game, handing the Irish its only loss in five starts so far this season. "We're a young team so we're prone to mistakes," said Loyola coach Dave McNamara. "The good thing is sometimes young players have a tough time bouncing back but they did today." Pitcher redeems himself The biggest rebound came from one of the team's veterans. Danny Roderick came on to pitch with two out and the bases loaded in the fifth and Notre Dame cleanup hitter Steve Timko took him deep over the fence in left-centre. "I made a mistake," Roderick said. "I left a change-up high and he got it." Two innings later, though, Roderick got a shot at redemption. After back-to-back walks to start the inning, Roderick came to the plate. "I asked him, do you want to bunt them over or do you want to swing," McNamara said. "He said, `I want to swing," The runners would move up on an errant pickoff throw, setting the stage. Two pitches later, Roderick hit a long fly ball to centre that scored Mike Deane with the winning run. "I haven't had a game-winning hit in a while," said Roderick, who also plays for the Oakville Royals. "Hopefully that made up for (the grand slam)." McNamara said it's an encouraging sign for the Hawks, who fell to 2-2 later in the day with a 4-2 loss to Georgetown, then moved back over .500 with a 9-3 win over T.A. Blakelock Tuesday. "We've got a big group of Grade 9s and giving them See Grade, page 30