Team NT’s latest venture on the road has come and gone, and the man in charge of it all says it couldn’t have gone any better.
The North American Indigenous Games in Halifax wrapped up on Saturday with the closing ceremony, but not before the territory’s athletes carted off a dozen medals. The majority of them came in track and field and swimming, while two were earned on the badminton court.
Carson Roche, Team NT’s chef de mission, said everything over the course of the week went pretty much according to plan.
“We’ve prepped for this for the last two years and the whole week was smooth,” he said. “Our athletes, coaches, mission staff and our performers all did great and there were no complaints from our team at all. I got to meet everyone on departure day and they were all happy to go home, but they had a great week.”
Broken down, the 12 medals equate to one gold, two silver and nine bronze. The gold medal came on July 20 courtesy of the U14 boys 4 x 400-metre relay team made up of Ethan Boucher, Greyson Catholique, Kohl McDonald and Kyren Poitras.
Roche was on hand for the race and said it was the highlight.
“We’ve got some real good track athletes,” he said. “When they announced the NWT winning gold, the loudest roar came from our side. It was a perfect day.”
He also got to see the U16 boys badminton doubles final featuring Detonaze Paulette and Andrew Kay-Grenier looking for gold. They would end up with silver, but it was a great run, said Roche.
He also said the soccer and volleyball teams impressed him — the boys soccer team got an early leg up on Ontario in their round-robin game, while the girls volleyball team had an impressive round-robin run.
“I think the heat got to the (soccer) boys down the stretch,” he said. “I was texting people that we were leading Ontario, then tied at the half, but they kind of fell off in the last few minutes. If the girls volleyball team had some more time together, they would’ve done even better than they did.”
The next games are scheduled for Calgary in 2027 and Roche said he’s hoping to add more sports to the repertoire next time around.
“I had some people asking me why we had no softball team, and I said we just didn’t have enough coaches,” he remarked. “I think we could have a good shot at medalling in softball, so I’m going to work with NWT Softball on that. Canoe had a lot of medals last time (Toronto in 2017), so I think if we can get a team together, we can definitely medal again.”