Withrow heading to the World’s
[attach]6284[/attach]At Ted Reeves Arena the normal cheer squad of parents supporting their kids is reversed.
“Go Dad!” shouts one kid.
“Good job Daddy,” yells another.
A group of girls are holding up a homemade yellow and maroon sign, “Go Withrow Go.”
The team on the iceless arena is the Withrow All Stars men’s ball hockey team, a team heading to Pilsen Czech Republic in September to compete in the 2012 World Masters Ball Hockey Championship.
“Many of us have been playing since we were kids and now we are in our 40s and 50s,” Lenny Abramowicz says. “This is a dream come true.”
To get a group of players with an average age of 48 ready for the world championship, coach Christine Pellerin is working them hard.
“Training is going very well,” she says. “[We’re] really focusing on the physical training. A lot of our guys are running an hour at least once a week and you know a lot of these guys were lucky if they could run for 10 minutes in a row.”
The Withrow team is one of two teams to represent Canada at the world championships. The Canadian Ball Hockey Association put together a team Canada of the best players across the country, but they also picked a community team.
“Many of us have been playing together for 10–12 years at Withrow,” Abramowicz says. “And the fact that we will be able to get there and wear a Withrow jersey against the best players in the league — for a lot of us this will be the culmination of our ball hockey experience.”
The team says that while winning would be the best, they are going to play because they love it.
“Quite frankly the ultimate goal is to have a great time,” Abramowicz says. “If we can win a few games along the way that’s tremendous too.”
That attitude is a big change for Pellerin.
“I’m a very competitive coach,” she says. “I need to learn to tone that down and I am.”
While Pellerin may be the first woman to coach an international men’s ball hockey team, Abramowicz says she was the obvious choice.
“Besides the fact that she’s the best coach we could think of, we also thought quite frankly this is a message that we want to bring across,” he says. “We know we are going to turn a few heads when we show up there. We think the Withrow community should be leading in that way — that we should proudly represent Canada and Toronto and having Chris as our leader will make a statement that way.”
The kids in the stands are all Withrow community members.
“A lot of these kids play in the Withrow league and many of us are coaches or parents,” Abramowicz says. “We’ve gotten to coach them at various events and this is their chance to come out and yell at their dads and their coaches, ‘Why aren’t you doing what you told us to do,’ but it’s been wonderful.”
Many of the team’s friends and family will be coming with the team to the Czech Republic, he says.
“It’s just going to be a party over there.”