‘28 - Wednesday, March 31, 1999 — North Shore News

B Crooks’

NEWS photo Brad Ledwidge

A Norvan player (right) stumbies following some tight checking by a Pegasus marker Sunday at Kinsmen Field.
The alt-North Shore Premier league tilt saw Peg snap Norvan's eight game unbeaten streak with a 2-1 win.

Trollers be
~ Pegasus edge

C.J. Thomas

Contributing Writer

ARE the West Van Trellers a
team of destiny?

Two weeks ago the men’s soccer team
was on life support near the bottom of the

Premier league and in grave danger of

being relegated to Division one.

Teday, they’re safe in Premier, they’re
in the Imperial Cup semi-final and’ on
Sunday, despite being nvo players short
-for most of the match, they won their
league game 2-1.

A complicated league decision has
ensured the Trollers spot in Premier next
year despite their likely finish near the bot-
tom of their side of Premier. The Trollers
won their recent quarter-final Imperial
Cup match over North Shore rival
Pegasus SC in a shootout despite being
down 3-0 with 10 minutes left.

Incredibjy, West Van scored three
times in the fast 10 minutes to send it into
overtime (basically, a miracle in the game
of soccer).

Last weekend the Trollers pulled off

another minor marvel, beating Metro
Ford 2-1 despite playing two men short
for three quarters of the game. Two West
Van players were shown the red card in
the first half for dissent, but the decisions
seemed harsh if not ridiculous for a league
of the calibre of Premier. Playing nine

against 11 in soccer basically means vou
are going to lose, but the Trollers had
other ideas. ©

Troller goalkeeper Rick Turner pulled
offsome big saves to keep the game score-
less going into halftime. West Van were
awarded a free kick just outside the 18-
vard box 15 minutes into the second half.
Kevin Colbow put it home to give his side
an improbable 1-0 lead.

Metro Ford came on in waves but
West Van detended well until Metro Ford
finally used their tvo man advantage to tie
the game at one each with fifteen minutes
left.

West Van’s Matt Judd then pulled off

something also virtually unheard of in
soccer, scoring on a free kick from 50
yards out.

“We talked about it at halftime” said
Trolier Shane Carphin. “Their _poalie
hung out too far from his goal.” Judd
sailed his free kick over the Metro Ford
keepers head and into the back of their
net to give West Van another miracle
result.

e¢ Trollers play their Imperial Cup
semi-final this Sunday against Indo
Canadians at Ambleside (1 p.m. kick-off).
The Imperial Cup is a single game knock-
out competition open to all Metro League
clubs and has been held since 1913.

Pegasus SC, meanwhile, have clinched
first place in their half of Premier and will

play Westside FC in the League final. Pe
topped North Van rivals Norvan SC 2-
Sunday at Kinsmen snapping Norv
impressive unbeaten string of cight
games.

Pegasus goalscorers were Randy
Celibrini. and Robin Regnier while
Laurent Scaligine notched the consolation
goal for Norvan.

However Norvan were fading in the
second half because they had just played,
and won 3-0 over Firefighters, 24 hours
earlier. Norvan. scorers were Scaligine,
Alan Koch and Simon Tate.

“Yt couldn’t be any happier,” said
Norvan coach Gunter Frey. “Pegasus are a
very good team... you can’t play a rested
Pegasus when you've played Firemen the
day before.”

“Norvan have rebounded in a huge way
after a disastrous start and are in a dog-
fight co clinch a spot in the Province Cup.

“We're playing with confidence,
there’s some good stuff being played out
there (by us).”

Norvan need to finish ahead of Metro
Ford or Croatia fer a backdoor chance to
qualify for the provincial championships,
something they haven’t done since 1995.

Norvan trail both reams by avo points
with two games to play.

Norvan play Croatia Sunday at
Kinsmen, 2 p.m. start. Pegasus have the
weekend off.

oydor wins bronze in season opener

NORTH Van’s Alison
Sydor began defence of
her World Cup moun-
tain bike cross country
crown Saturday, placing
third in the season’s
opening race.

Alison Dunlap of the U.S.,
took the gold in one hour and
§7 minutes and 59 seconds.
Gunn-Rita Dahle of Norway

laced second at 21 seconds
ack and Sydor was third 1:24
behind the winner.

“Pve been quite sick with a
bad cold the last few weeks so I

serewae

wasn’t too sure how things
would go today,” said Sydor.
“Dunlap and Dahle have just
been in fying in the Jead-up
races this season so already. I
knew I had my work cut out
for me.”

The race started with a
short one kilometre loop
before heading out onto the
main part of the course for an
eight kilometre loop which the
women lap four times. The tirst
half of the cight kilometres
consists of a steady climb up to
about 700 feet and then the
second half is mainly a down-
hill run for four kilometres.

.Sydor was the leader after
the first lap despite crashing on
the initial descent. Dunlap
began to make her move on
the climb in the second lap to
pull ahead for good. Sydor bat-
tled Dahle for second until the
end of the third lap.

“I kept pace as best I could
with Gunn-Rita,” said Sydor.
“But I started to feel tired at
the end and my main concern
was protecting “third place. In
the World Cup this season vour
lowest: results aren't thrown
out in the final standings so I
want to make sure I get all the
points I can.”

ee ee eT

REIGNING World Cup
champion Alison Sydor.

Olympics still

SHE retired 18 months
ago from competition
on the running track,
but North Vancouver’s
Charmaine Crooks is
still pretty fast on her
feet.

Nor in the sense of run-
al-
y, Which took her to four
Olympic Games from 1984
to 1996, but in her reaction
to the ongoing Olympic
bribery scandat of the
several months. Ifa c'
old reporter was looking tor
erally trash the
ive, self-perpetu-
ating "International Olympic
Committee for the sins
several of its members — and
he was — she was having no
part of

Aside from admitting that
in a barrel as humongous as
the IOC — it has more than
200 member countries —
there are always a few bad

‘© be found, Crooks*

15 Were pretty mild.
She’d like to see more
women involved in the IOC
structure, some prominent
and respected figures from
outside sport and, most of
all, more athlete involvement,
including voting privileg
for the young people the big
show is all about.

Also there are the matters
of transparency, accountabili-
ty and a more democratic
setup, all of which seem to be
in the IOC books for the
future, if the fallout from
IOC vice-president Dick
Pound’s investigation of the
Salt Lake City 2002 Winter
Games bribes-taking and giv-
ing is not quictly swept away
by the passage of time.

The lady doubes that it
will; she believes that reform
truly is under way.

And she figures to be part
of it. Instead of running for
gold, which she never man-
aged to win at four
Olympics, her new career
may be running for office.
She started at the 96 Games
in Attanta when her
fellow/sister athletes elected
her to the IOC Athletes’
Committee.

There are 18 members, all
of chem elected, which makes
them an LOC anomaly in that
they are the only democrati-
cally elected group in the
entire IOC setup. They meet
twice a year and forward
their ideas to the IOC . The
longtime autocratic old boys’
club apparently is not ignor-
ing them. For instance,
there'll be three athlete votes
on the IOC bid committee
for the 2006 Winter Games.

If running for office is an
alternative route to fitness,
Crooks will be fit for the rest
of her lite. She’s a member of
the UBC-based Thunderbird
Sports Council, the Canadian
Centre for Ethics in Sport,
the Canadian Olympic
Association and the newly-
formed Vancouver Training
Centre, one of many such
centres across Canada for the
development of elite athletes,

She has her own media,
marketing and consulting

goal

company, NC

acronym stands for Never
Give Up, which goes a long
way fo explaining her attitude
to the scandalized Olympics:
let's not destroy them, let's
reform them.

The cynical old reporter
(COR) has suggested for
many vears now that the
Olvmpies have become a
dinosaur; and that like the
dinosaurs they should disap-
pear trom the face of the
earth. When the modern
Games started in 1896, the
state of transportation and
communication in the global
village was so rudimentary,
that assembling the best ath-
letes in the world for compe-
tition onee
Was a consid

A century later the jet air-
lines and marketing revenue
have made it possible for
every individual sport in the
Olympics to regularly hold its
own world championship
event. So, argues the COR,
what is the need for a huge,
overblown production like
the Olympics?

Charmaine doesn’t see it
that way at all. The Olympics
are the inspiration and ulti-
mate goal for young athletes
all over the world. An
Olympic medal is the greatest
honour of all, greater than a
world championship medal.
Striving to get there creates
self-esteem and good sports-

Commercialized as they’ve
become, much of the money
filters down to provide facili-
ties and funding for aspiring
athletes all over the world.
World championships alone
can’t, she argues, provide as
much visibility and funding
for the grass roots of their
sports.

Truly, Crooks is wedded
to the Olympic ideal and
really believes that the excess-
es that come hand in hand
with big money — corrup- -
tion at the upper levels and
doping down on the field of
play — can be expunged;
that the Olympic ideal can be
re-polished.

Just as obviously, she’s a
mover and shaker who'd like
to move up the Olympic fad-
der. Right now, as one of the
14 members of the Canadian
Olympic Association’s B divi-
sion, she’s on the bottom
rung, serving on various sub-
committees,

Next step up would be to
the COA cight-person board,
where landing the job as chef
de mission for some future
Olympics could be a launch-
ing pad to bigger and better
opportunities. Such as even-
tually making it into that
exclusive [OC club.

She laughs about the

See Sprinter page 29