Bad decision by AWG organizers?

It was with great sadness, tinged with anger and disappointment (and I’m putting this mildly,) that I read of the ‘official’ decision by the AWG International Committee to cut out another segment of one of our true winter sports from the Arctic Winter Games, namely pee wee hockey for 11- and 12-year-olds.

What criteria did they use to determine this? Not winter enough?

Not Arctic enough?

In my opinion, what really needs to be considered for the AWG is what sports are truly definitive of winter games and which are predominant in our Arctic regions. One really has to wonder what goes on in the heads of the AWG bureaucrats who make these decisions about the future participation and direction of the games and what the consequences of this latest move will be further down the road.

What next? Removal of Inuit games? Dene games?

With all due respect, there are other sports that are far less reflective of the traditions and popularity of our sporting communities in the circumpolar regions, such as badminton, figure skating and table tennis etc. to name a few, that should have been considered long before pee wee hockey. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to pick on any other sport, but let’s get real, what do more kids play and participate in? What do more people go to watch and enjoy?

As the one of the 2004 Team Nunavut pee wee coaches, I spent 10 days with seventeen 11- and 12-year-old developing athletes, who experienced for the first time ever, a high level of competition, coupled with the chance to experience new cultures and meet other young people of their age from all over the circumpolar world.

If you were to ask any of them, I guarantee they’d tell you that the experience opened their eyes to a lot of things and gave them the incentive to strive toward future goals of participating in their sport and being a part of something special. Now 17 kids and two coaches from Nunavut, as well as other regions, will no longer have the same opportunity in the future.

I definitely believe the AWG international committee has lost touch with what the games are really about. I believe they have no idea how this will hurt more kids in the long run as they strive to create an AWG that many of us will probably not recognize in a few years from the original AWG concept and objectives.

I also believe the AWG committee should be looking at the participation of sub-arctic Northern Alberta with a view to severely curtailing its involvement in the future as they usually are one of the largest delegations with a variety of competitive advantages and population over the rest of the circumpolar participants in many sports.

Meanwhile, Arctic regions such as Nunavik are denied full participation. Maybe it’s time we cut a few of the so-called brain cells from the international committee to make room for real improvements?

John Thomas
Iqaluit