eR Oe oR

CERES Er te

ife-long love of strings

wim
Kearney

THE SPECTATOR

THIS IS the way in the late
1950s and early 1960s when
Ann Barclay was Canada’s
top women’s tennis player
and the professional game
was still nearly a decade into
the future:

The Canadian Lawn Tennis
Association (CLTA), as it then was
known, would send her on the
European circuit and give her $50 a
week to cover all expenses — hotel,
meals, clothes, tennis balls and inci-
dentals.

“But there were cash incen-
tives,” she was remembering the
other day while taking tea with
your agent. “You'd get $50 expens-
es from the tournament organizers
for each round you advanced. So

you made sure you entered not only
in singles, but in doubles and mixed
doubles as well, You had to stay on
the courts eight hours a day in order
to cat.

“Y augmented my finances in
France by playing bridge. | lost
money at first, but outof necessity f
got to be pretty good. Then there
were the horses. | love horses and
there's a racetrack at Nice.

“You could make 50-cent bets,
which was about my speed. Bul my
French wasn't very good, so |
couldn’t get much sense out of the
form sheet. But on this one day !
went down to the barns and it sud-
denly occurred to me that the best
horses had the most expensive blan-
kets. So, I bet the blankets and won
$35.

“IT guess that comes under the
heading of survival techniques.
Whenever I came back to Canada,
the CLTA cut off the weekly $50.
Over a period of five years, I had
more than 200 part time jobs, fitting
them in between tournaments and
training. I still remember a time
when I had corn flakes and milk
three times a day for two weeks.”

Evidently a regimen of non-stop
breakfast food had few bad effects
on her play. She was four times
national women's singles and dou-
bles champion before retiring at 24
to go back to school.

That was 30 years ago and only
now have her on-court accomplish-
ments been fully recognized. Last
month she was inducted into the
Canadian Tennis Hall of Fame at a
ceremony in St. John, N.B.

For the iast five years she has

lived in North Van and commutes
daily to her job as an English
teacher at Vancouver Tech, which
she describes as the United Nations
of tower mainiand high schools.
More than 50 different languages
van be found in the student body of
a school which, contradicting its
name and original purpose, now is
75% acadeniic.

She only wishes she had moved
to the North Shore years before she
did, because “Tve found a sense of
community here I haven't enjoved
since 1 was a kid. growing up in the
West End.”

The West End of her childhood
was a place of lovely old wooden
houses with big verandahs, apart-
ment buildings that rose no higher
than three storeys; a place where
“you knew just about everyone and
my mother didn’t have a worry in
the world when she sent me out to
the back alley to pick mint leaves
for the mint sauce to go with the
roast lamb we were having for din-
ner.”

Her backyard was Stanley Park
and the public courts there are
where her father introduced her to
tennis when she was 10, She was a
quick learner. Just 11 when she
won her first tournament, at Seattle,
in under-13 play. In the next few
years she won B.C. and national
championships in all age groups
and at 20 was dispatched to her
$50-a-week tours: Europe in the
summer and the Caribbean in the
winter. :

As she neared her mid-20s the
CLTA decided she wasn’t going to
win Wimbledon or the U.S. Open

Norwesters hosting events

THE NORWESTERS Track and Field Club is host-
ing a weekend of events for athletes ages nine to 15.
This Saturday, young athletes from across the
province will compete in the B.C. Junior
Dairyland Cross
Championships in the Seymour Demonstration Forest.
Registration for the Rice Lake course event is at 11
a.m., with the races set to start at noon. The event is
open to all athletes between the ages of nine and 15 (in
1994), involved in schoo! teams or recreational running

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clubs. Call Harriet at 922-0747 for information.

On Saturday evening, Norwesters are hosting the
B.C. Junior Development Annual Awards and Silent
Auction at the North Shore Winter Club. Provincial
athletes who have posted top 10 B.C. performances
will receive awards.

Norwesters who will be attending the awards cere-
mony include Tamsin Anstey, Rodrigo Guttierez,
Andrew Hoodless and Matthew Smith. Also
Commonwealth Games’ athletes will be on hand.

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and started a hunt for new and
younger faces, Had there been pro
tennis at the ime, Ann says she
would have joined the circuit.

But there wasn’t, so she enrolled
atthe University of Calgary and
won a teaching degree. “T coached
my way Chrough university.” she
says.

She still loves the game and
would still be playing in masters
competition but for severe buck
injuries five years ago when her car
was rear-ended. But she has started
again at the North Shore Winter
Club and has firm plans to be com-
petitive once more.

Practices are a lot less strenuous
than during her teens, when she
would put in 16 hours on a week-
end and three or four hours a day
after school. Indeed, there was a
time in her early life when she
played all winter, in windbreaker
and gloves, she and her brother
sweeping the snow off one of the
Stanley Park courts so they could
fit in a few sets.

Long removed from the tourna-
ment circuit, she indulges a life-
long love affair with music, having
composed several choral pieces,
themes for violin and piano and,
over a five-year period, a sympho-
ny.
One problem: she hasn’t been
able to orchestrate it “because my
ability doesn’t stretch that far.”
Hopefully, she’ ll find someone to
help her do it.

And it would be nice, if you'll
pardon the stretch from tennis to
music, to see the string section get a
lot of work.

* With purchase of any Nike
basketball shoe,

Siobhan O’Connall
M.CRA.

Lynn Valley Orthopaedic &
Sports Physiotherapy Centre

Saranne Drew and Philippe De Clerck
are pleased to announce Siobhan
O'Connell has joined their practice at
Lynn Valley Centre.
A West Vancouver resident and spons
enthusiast she brings with her years of
ortho & physio experience.
Lynn Valley Orthopaedic & Sports
Physiotherapy Centre located on
the 2nd floor in Lynn Valley
Centre.
Offoring Rehabilitation Service in
* Manuel Therapy
* Sports Relstad Injuries
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* Craniosacral Therapy
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For Further Info & Booking 983-8514

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SOURCE FOR

Lynn Vailey Centre
1199 Lynn Valley Rd., N.Van.

980-9211