Introducing a fantastic four

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This article was published 26/01/2018 (2808 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One could be a first-round NHL draft pick in 2021.

Another is taking dead aim at a spot on the women’s national hockey team. Still another has developed an uncanny range and precision with her jump shot that could take her to the highest levels of her chosen sport. The fourth, a raw but talented sprinter, may have more upside than any athlete his coach, the former boss of the national track and field team, has seen in his 35 years in the business.

Any one of the four — Carson Lambos, Logan Angers, Alyssa Porco and Brian Lewis — could be the next big thing on Winnipeg’s sporting landscape.

Here’s a closer look:

 

CARSON LAMBOS, 15, hockey

Lambos may not be a household name yet, but he’s getting there.

His games with the Rink Hockey Academy’s (RHA) bantam team have become must-see viewing for Western Hockey League scouts and U.S. college recruiters. So much so, the 6-0, 188-pound defenceman is now considered a solid bet to go first overall in this spring’s WHL Bantam Draft.

At last weekend’s John Reid Memorial Tournament in Spruce Grove, Alta., a première showcase for bantam-aged prospects, Lambos was chosen top defenceman and named to the all-tournament team.

“Well, they’re there,” Lambos says of all the scouts in the stands. “There’s no avoiding that, but at the end of the day, you just have to go play. Not for the scouts or anybody else — for yourself. Some people might get distracted by (the attention) but for myself, after seeing it last year and seeing the older guys go through it and deal with it, I’m OK… Some guys stress too much and let it affect them.”

Make no mistake, Lambos and his teammates are serious about their games.

On weekdays, the River Heights resident rises at 6:30 a.m. in time for Grade 9 classes beginning at 7:30 at Shaftesbury Collegiate. By lunchtime, the RHA gang is bused for the afternoon to either to The RINK’s mini ice surface for intensive skills work or the Southdale Community Centre for practise. Yoga or dryland training is part of the daily regimen. Weekends are game time; RHA teams are road warriors, busing to games in Saskatchewan and Alberta and flying to dates in B.C.

“I’m comfortable with the level of play and the amount of practising and working out,” Lambos says. “There’s nothing I’d rather spend my time doing, working towards hockey and my end goal — making it to the NHL.”

RHA head coach Brad Purdie says: “He’s really mature for his age. And physically, you’d think he’s a 25-year-old man.”

In 41 games this season with the RHA bantams, Lambos has 19 goals, 67 points and 46 penalty minutes. In a further 10 games with the RHA midgets, he’s added four goals, eight points and 12 penalty minutes.

“He’s physically stronger than most, he skates better than most, shoots harder than most and has a patience to his game where he doesn’t get flustered,” Purdie says. “He’s quick enough and strong enough to recover from any turnovers or mistakes he may have made. He plays with a lot of confidence — sometimes it gets him into trouble when he tries to do too many things, but he has the ability to recover and he does have the ability when he goes up to play with the older guys, to keep the game simple and move the puck quicker.”

 

LOGAN ANGERS, 18, hockey

She’s unflappable, the backbone of her team.

“I don’t think pressure ever gets to Logan,” Larry Bumstead, head coach of the St. Mary’s Academy Prep hockey squad, says of his No. 1 goaltender. “She’s so calm back there. She challenges. She’s calm and collected. She competes. She wants to be better.”

That being said, playing hockey’s most scrutinized position can be a bit much sometimes.

“I just like to pretend that it’s not — as much as it is all on me sometimes,” Angers says. “We’re still out there as a team.”

Last month, Angers was the lone Manitoban to suit up for Team Canada at the world under-18 championship in Russia. While she didn’t see game action as Canada’s No. 3 goaltender, she still sees the experience as a valuable step in her development.

At 5-11, Angers has the advantage of being a big goalie, but has also worked diligently to improve her quickness and reaction time.

“I think it’s obviously an advantage to be taller, but in the same way, being taller makes it harder to move faster,” Angers says. “A lot of it is working on faster foot speed.”

Angers, who played on a AAA bantam boys team in 2013-14, is in her fourth season with St. Mary’s top team, a member of the Canadian Sports School Hockey League. She has four shutouts and a 1.74 goals-against average in 17 games.

Last year, Angers accepted a hockey scholarship from Quinnipiac University, a Division 1 hockey program in Hamden, Conn. She begins school there in the fall, but will redshirt during her first year before joining the active roster in 2019-20.

University will have a level of comfort for Angers, who will join former St. Mary’s teammates Kate MacKenzie and Randi Marcon at Quinnipiac; she’ll also be mentored by Hockey Canada goalie coach Amanda Mazzotta, who serves as an assistant coach with the Bobcats.

“I’m going to go to Quinnipiac and my goalie coach there is really amazing and she’s going to help me try to get back into the program at the U-22 level or hopefully, the national program,” Angers says.

Bumstead is convinced Angers’ career path has few limitations, noting she has effectively balanced a superb academic record while playing hockey and softball (Angers still regularly practises with her Winnipeg Thunder team and was named to Manitoba’s under-21 team as catcher for the Canada Summer Games).

“One of her main strengths is time management,” Bumstead says. “In four years, I don’t think she’s ever asked for a day off.”

 

ALYSSA PORCO, 14, basketball

Porco loves the gym — it’s like a second home.

On weekdays, the 5-10 shooting guard (she’s still growing) is in the gym before school and during the lunch hour. What’s more, she hits the hardwood early after classes to get a head start on practice.

On weekends during the high school season, she’s shuttling to the Sport for Life Centre in downtown Winnipeg on Sundays where she practises with her Centre for Performance (CP) under-15 provincial club. After the high school season, it’s three practices per week with her CP team.

“I’ve always kinda liked it,” says the 14-year-old, a member of River East Collegiate’s No. 3-ranked junior varsity girls squad.

“I don’t remember it being hard. It was something that was fun to do and I like to practise and I got more competitive as I got older.

“I’m in the gym a lot and I have a court in my backyard that I’m always practising on when I can.”

“She has the potential to be very good, play university basketball and get age-group national team invites to tryout camp,” says Dan Becker, Basketball Manitoba’s technical director and high performance coach. “It really depends on how much time she puts in training her body and skill set.”

Porco seems fully prepared to put in the time; even her off-season is a whirlwind. From September to December, the CP team practises two to 2½ hours three times a week while playing Sundays in the Rising Star League against teams stocked with Grade 11 and 12 players. In April and May, the CP team travels to American tournaments to expose its players to tougher competition.

“It takes a lot of years to develop a shot like Alyssa has developed,” Maggie Hiebert said, her coach with the Centre of Performance. “I would never leave her open on the three-point line — ever. That’s rare for someone her age. She’s been a hot shooter since she’s been in Grade 7, which is very rare. And her overall court sense, her ability to see the floor and know when to be selfish is pretty amazing for her age.”

In 17 games with the under-15 CP team, Porco is averaging a team-high 14.5 points, 2.9 assists and 1.8 steals per game.

Porco has come a long way since getting her start as a four-year-old on a team at the East St. Paul Community Club. She has ambitions to play at a Canadian university or U.S. college and she’s pushing hard to refine her game.

Recently, her family enlisted the aid of former national team point guard Martin Riley, a teacher at Miles Mac, as her skills coach.

“He knows what he’s talking about,” she says. “He’s very strict.”

 

BRIAN LEWIS, 18, track and field

Lewis, an 18-year-old University of Manitoba student, was born in the cradle of sprinters — Jamaica — yet he never ran competitively in his homeland.

“I never did, I was kind of afraid of the competition,” says the soft-spoken Lewis, who moved to Canada with his parents in 2014. “They’re pretty fast there.”

Jamaica, of course, is home to Usain Bolt, a three-time Olympic 100-metre and 200-metre champ.

In Winnipeg, Lewis ran high school track at West Kildonan Collegiate but upon reaching the U of M last fall, he immediately got the attention of long-time sprint coach Alex Gardiner.

Gardiner believes the 6-4, 185-pounder has almost unlimited potential.

“He’s been blessed with a real good anatomical structure,” Gardiner says. “Long legs. Long femur (bone), because that’s important. Average-sized feet. You can almost spot someone who should be fast by looking at their anatomy.

“Once you see him run, you see how smooth he is… It’s one of those situations where you know you’ve got a diamond, you just don’t want to mess it up. You’ve gotta be really, really cautious.”

Competing during the indoor season with the Bisons, Lewis has a seasonal best of 7.14 seconds and his coach is convinced he’s about two years of training away from trimming two-tenths of a second off his time and competing for a spot on the U Sports podium. Fact is, the shorter sprint distances such as the 60 and 100 metres are only an appetizer for the main course.

In four or five years, Gardiner says, Lewis’s longer body type is better suited to becoming an elite 400-metre runner on the international scene. That kind of upside has already attracted the attention of Athletics Canada head coach Glenroy Gilbert.

“I said, ‘Brian, you’ve got some talent but it’s going to take some time, you don’t have the background,’” Gardiner says.

“He’s still anxious, like most young men, to run faster and he’s coming off a hamstring strain, which isn’t surprising — he’s overreaching. But I can’t see him not being really, really good in time.”

To that end, Lewis is putting in the time on the track and the weight room (three hours a day, five days a week) while also balancing work commitments and school.

“It feels pretty good,” Lewis said of Gardiner’s encouragement. “He really pushes me to see what my full potential will be.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sawa14