The countdown is on.
The 2016 Penticton BC Winter Games are coming and personally I can feel the change of an event that was a year out to the excitement of being just weeks away.
I participated in two BC Winter Games in the sport of ringette when I was teenager and there are things that still stick out in my memory.
The first is the great friendships I made in the lead up to, and during, the Games. Nothing brings you closer to your teammates than sleeping on inch thick mats on a school room floor while spending four days together around the flurry of not only the event you are competing in, but seeing all the other athletes. Punctuated by the fact you are all working so hard together towards one goal, no matter what part of the zone or province you come from, or what school you go to. You are bonded together.
The second is the feeling of walking out with all the athletes at the opening ceremony. At that age it was the coolest thing to get treated like an elite athlete and have the spotlight on you and your peers. It is your own version of the Olympics.
The BC Winter Games is in fact a stepping stone for many athletes to go on to bigger competition. Take, for instance, Summerland’s Kristi Richards who once competed at the BC Winter Games and later in freestyle skiing for Canada in two Olympic Winter Games (2006 in Turin and 2014 in Vancouver).
Myself, well, it spurred me on to other things — one of them being journalism and that eventually did take me to the Winter Olympics (Vancouver and Sochi). Covering women’s hockey mainly, and some men’s, for a news service is one of the biggest highlights in my life. It is also why I am encouraging everyone to get involved with the BC Winter Games next month. There is something electric being around the athletes that takes me back to that same feeling I had as an athlete at the BC Winter Games.
Some of the coolest moments for me gathering quotes from Olympic athletes happened away from the ice. In Sochi, I, along with a team of other reporters, were tasked with getting quotes from the athletes as they waited under the bowels of the Bolshoi Ice Dome to get paraded into the opening ceremony. I stood a foot away as the Jamaican bobsled team excitedly took out their cell phones and recorded a fellow reporter asking them questions and I watched athletes proudly showing off their country’s uniform’s, some more colourful than others — ahem, the island nation of Tonga with palm trees on their winter jackets.
I also stood alone in the media mix zone after a practice speaking with Marie-Philip Poulin the day before the gold medal game pitting hockey rivals Canada and the U.S. The very humble, and at that time quiet, Poulin eeked out some great stuff to me about scoring the golden goal in Vancouver and the pressure to do it all over again. As it turns out, I sat the next day with one of the best seats in the house for one of the most epic women’s hockey games ever. Guess who scored that goal? In overtime Poulin won Canada the gold medal, again. Thrilling is an understatement. I am now rallying for Hockey Canada to send me to the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics, since obviously I am their good luck charm.
As a side note, I made a last minute decision to jam my goalie skates into my luggage at the expense of extra clothes to last me the six weeks I would be in Russia. A decision I will never regret — even though in Mother Russia, laundry machines run you.
As they closed down the Shayba Arena because the medal games were all being played under the signature illuminated roof of the Bolshoi, I pulled my skates out of my backpack and booted around the ice. I looked up to the empty stands in awe wondering what it was like for the athletes and imagined a packed crowd chanting for their country, goosebumps.
Like I said earlier, the countdown to the BC Winter Games is on. And, none of these moments to last a lifetime either at the BC level or the Olympic level can happen without an army of volunteers. I can guarantee you will be missing out on something special by not being involved. For more information on volunteering visit BCGames.org or call the Penticton 2016 BC Winter Games office at 250-492-2026.
Kristi Patton is the editor of the Penticton Western News and the Director of Promotions for the Penticton 2016 BC Winter Games.
