38 Sports Oakville Beaver SPORTS EDITOR: JON KUIPERIJ Phone 905-845-3824 (ext. 432) Fax 905-337-5571 email sports@oakvillebeaver.com · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2009 Technical foul Administrative error costs men's masters soccer team By Herb Garbutt OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF PHOTO COURTESY OF GRAND AM COMMUNICATIONS THUMBS UP: Oakville auto racer Ken Wilden won the Grand-Am Koni Challenge points title this season, locking up the championship last weekend with a sixth-place finish at Virginia International Raceway. Driver wins series title, one race at a time By Jon Kuiperij BEAVER SPORTS EDITOR One of the most popular cliches in sports is taking one game or one race at a time. Ken Wilden had no other choice. The 40-year-old auto racer and his Rehagen team began the year in rough shape, down half their drivers from the previous season and without enough sponsorship money lined up to last the 11-event Grand-Am Koni Challenge season. "It was dependent on us having to finish as high as we could, to get some prize money to put back into the team," said Wilden, an Oakville native who has raced professionally for more than 20 years. In fact, Wilden's participation in the season-opening event in Daytona was mostly to see how he and the team would measure up. Wilden finished third in Daytona and third at the next race in Homestead-Miami. "We came out of the second race with the points lead," Wilden said. "(Rehagen owner) Dean Martin didn't want to give that up." Wilden didn't give up the points lead, either. He locked up the Koni championship last weekend by finishing sixth at the season's final event at Virginia International Raceway, his 11th top-10 finish in as many outings. For Wilden, needing to perform well to fund participation in the next race reminded him of his younger days. "Back when I started years ago and ran my own team, it was the same thing. I had my car and I had a little bit of money. It was like I had to do well to keep it going, but if I crashed my car I was in big trouble," he said. "That was the risk, but it never slowed me down." The championship was Wilden's first in the Koni Challenge, an endurance series that features showroom stock-based cars like Mustangs, BMW M3s, Porsche 997s, Camaros and Challengers. Wilden, who also operates a driver training centre in Mississauga, is optimistic this season's performance will help him get a GT ride for next year's NASCAR Nationwide Series event in Montreal. "The phone's ringing a little bit now," he said. "There are different opportunities." Opportunities seemed endless for Wilden at the start of his career. He won the Players GM Series in 1992 and finished second in the Formula Atlantic Series in 1999 (four spots ahead of Alex Tagliani), and the IndyCar Series seemed to be the next step. He had sponsors interested in helping him move into CART, but both businesses were sold before the season began and the sponsorships fell through. Wilden believes he would have done very well in CART, but says he has no regrets. "I did the best I could in trying to get myself in position to have an opportunity like that," he said. "But certainly I wonder what I could have done." He isn't interested in CART now, however. "I really like the endurance side of racing. The 24-hour Daytona, 12-hour Sebring," he said. "I absolutely would love to start with the road circuits at the Nationwide and maybe try to move into the Sprint Cup series for road courses. The heavier cars, I've always done well in. "It just makes sense, and there's more opportunities available in endurance racing." Despite being told it did nothing wrong, Oakville Fine Homes has been disqualified from this weekend's Eastern Canadian Championships. The masters men's soccer team was notified by the Ontario Soccer Association (OSA) that it would not be allowed to participate in the championship due to an administrative error. To make matters worse, it has also been stripped of the Ontario Cup championship it won last month by beating the Markham Lightning in a shootout. Hunter Madeley of the Oakville team said the team fulfilled its obligation by submitting player registrations to its home club, the Burlington Soccer League. The club then registered all the players with the Ontario Soccer Association (OSA) but did not register the team. The error was not discovered until the OSA went to forward information to the Canadian Soccer Association for the championship and could not find Oakville Fine Homes in its database. "If we had failed to live up to our obligations, if we had been late or player information had been incorrect, I could understand," Madeley said, "but we lived up to our responsibility." Tony Dawkins, match secretary of the Burlington Soccer League, said he helped team manager Craig Russell register the team because the league registrar was not available prior to the deadline. "Craig and I thought we had done everything that needed to be done," he said. "It's very disappointing to hear this. It's hard to miss out because of a technicality. They earned it on the field." Though the error should have prevented Oakville Fine Homes from participating in the Ontario Cup, the team was not notified about it until it received an e-mail around 4:30 p.m. Monday. The OSA could not be reached for comment. Madeley said with only four days until the Eastern Canadian tournament began, they had very few options to appeal the decision. He also doesn't know why the team was not given an opportunity to represent itself before the ruling was made. "The OSA was very accommodating, especially the CEO," he said. "They were very helpful but at the end of the day the committee's ruling was that it was a violation of the rules." The only other recourse was an appeal to the CSA, which Madeley said takes 15-20 days. Madeley said the ruling was disappointing, given that the team had a good chance of winning. "Markham, the team we beat, won Easter Canadians last year and won each game by a pretty wide margin," he said. "We were positioned well to win Eastern Canadians." Instead, the team's only role at the tournament will be turning over the Ontario Cup trophy to Markham, which will take Oakville's place.