Troy Westwood

Keeping her sporting options open

Lainey Harding is a 12-year-old Grade 6 student at École George-McDowell.

Meet a young goalie with lofty goals

Kaia Sigurdson is a 14-year-old, Grade 9 student who attends Shaftesbury High School.

Young Thrasher aims to fly high

Ed Salay is a 14-year-old Grade 9 student at Garden City Collegiate, a very hard-working and strong hockey player.

At home on the rink and in the fairway

Gavin Carver is a 14-year-old, Grade 9 student who attends St. Paul’s High School.

A balanced approach is best

Julian Antonation is a very impressive and insightful 17-year-old, Grade 11 student at Westgate Mennonite Collegiate.

Young soccer player aims to be the best

Romeo Ribeiro is an eight-year-old Grade 4 student at Oak Bluff Community School, where he is a very good student who is kind and respectful to other students and to his teachers.

Two-sport athlete dreams big

Josh Caspillo is a 14-year-old Grade 9 student at Collège Jeanne-Sauvé.

Watch out Luka, here comes Bepo

Bepo Malbasa is a seven-year-old Grade 2 student at Const. Edward Finney School.

Young hockey player is on a mission

Mateo Saldivar is a 12-year-old student at the Starbuck Hockey Academy at Starbuck School.

She’ll tumble for ya

Emily Miller is nine years old and attends Forest Park Community School, where she is in Grade 4.

This little soccer player has a dream…

Lucas Kwiatkowski is a seven-year-old Grade 2 student at St. Alphonsus School, where he says his favourite class is gym.

Kamenz shows his strong side for Rifles

Brandon Kamenz is a 21-year-old SAM linebacker in his fourth year with the Winnipeg Rifles junior football team, which plays in the Prairie Conference of the Canadian Junior Football League.

Budding star sounds like a coach’s dream

Max George is a 13-year-old who attends the Starbuck Hockey Academy at Starbuck School.

Player, captain, coach, ref… this girl’s got game

Brooke McNab is a 15-year-old Grade 10 student at J. H. Bruns Collegiate who plays soccer with the Bonivital U15 girls.

Always be confident in yourself

Nicholas Parrott is a 17-year-old Grade 12 student at Churchill High School. Away from school, he spends a lot of time training for and playing his two favourite sports — basketball and football.

Young offensive lineman all-in for championship run

Sean Rowe is a 17-year-old going into Grade 12 at Dakota Collegiate.

For the love of the game

Leju James is a 15-year-old soon to be going into Grade 10 at Daniel McIntyre Collegiate Institute. Leju is an exceptional student who has made the honour roll for the last two years.

Rebels captain stays focused

Prabh Bhathal is a 13-year-old getting ready to enter Grade 8 at St. John’s Ravenscourt. Along with being a very good student, he is proving himself an exceptional young hockey player, too.

For the love of the game

Lukas Bladon is a 15-year-old student at Kelvin High School who is enjoying the summer as he prepares to start grade 10.

“Grade 9 was really good,” he said. “I really enjoyed Kelvin. Overall the teachers were great at helping us and educating us. They did a great job of helping to make the experience fun.”

Lukas is an athletic young man who has tried and enjoys a number of sports, but he does have one sport that stands out as his favourite.

“I have been playing tennis since I was eight years old. The way I got into it was that my mom had a Leisure Guide and we were looking through it. We saw Taylor Tennis and decided to give it a try.”

Watch out world, here comes Kaiiana

Kaiiana Olivier-Job is three years old and already showing promising signs of being a dedicated student and athlete. Asked to name one of her favourite books, Kaiiana said, with authority “Peter Rabbit!”

She has the entire Peter Rabbit collection and it is not unusual for her to be cuddled up in mom’s or dad’s arms reading her favourite book.

What the future holds athletically for this young lady is still yet to be known, but if mom and dad are any indication, Kaiiana is going to find something she loves to do and become very good at it. Mom Nicole is well known in the Winnipeg squash community, playing at a provincial level and she’s even competed in a number of professional matches in local tournaments. Dad Tevin is a university-level basketball and soccer player who can still be seen out on a court or soccer pitch in our city.

Kaiiana has taken to football and has lots of fun watching games with mom and dad. It is not unusual, while watching a game, for her to scream “You gotta catch it man!” or “Touchdown!”

Perseverance pays off with pro contract

Matthieu Gomercic is a 24-year-old hockey player from Winnipeg who recently graduated with a degree in kinesiology from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa, where he also played hockey for the Ridgebacks.

He’s now enjoying his life playing professional hockey, after finishing the 2021-22 season with the Atlanta Gladiators of the ECHL.

“University was a great experience for me,” said Gomercic, who was one of the 13 survivors of the 2018 Humboldt Broncos bus crash.

“I was able to set up my classes so that my school day was done at about noon. After that I could relax a bit and focus on hockey. The last two years of classes were interesting with everything being online.”

Take him out to the ball game

Nixon Carriere is a 17-year-old Grade 11 student at Garden City Collegiate who is very focused and determined to do well.

“School is going good,” he says. “My favourite class is calculus. I like solving numbers, I find it fun.”

Nixon is also pretty darn busy with the sport he loves, and that sport is baseball. He plays for the North Winnipeg Pirates, the Elmwood Giants junior teams, the Garden City Gophers and he’s trying out for the U17 Team Manitoba Canada Summer Games squad.

“It would be a lot of fun to make that team,” he says. “The games are in Niagara Falls.”

The five most important words in sport

Kruno Brnjas is a six-year-old Grade 2 student at Dr. F. W. L. Hamilton School in East St. Paul.

Kruno is a little shy but when he decides to speak he doesn’t mess around.

“I like math. I like numbers,” he said when asked how school is going.

“My teacher is Ms. Sarapu. We all call her Ms. S. She is a good teacher. She is nice and friendly, and she is good at math.”

Dedication, commitment help young player shine

Payton Chornley is a 12-year-old Grade 7 student who attends Collège Churchill High School’s Churchill Hockey Academy.

Payton is incredibly mature and well-spoken for her age. She averages 98 per cent in school, so I asked her what happened to the other two per cent and we had a good laugh.

“Math is my favourite class,” she said. “I enjoy solving problems and trying to work things out. Math is very challenging.”

Payton also enjoys the challenge of the sport she loves, which is hockey. I loved her answer when I asked what her goals are for both her education and her hockey: