It started as a dream, became a goal, and ultimately turned into reality as they placed 15th Feb. 17 at the Whistler Sliding Centre.

“Our two starts definitely weren’t what we were hoping for,” Snith recalled of the Olympic runs a few days after the competition.

“We need to work on the starts and conditioning and strength. Flexibility is a really big part of it . . . if we can combine those things along with the experience we have gained I think we can excel on the World Cup circuit and at the next Games as well.”

Walker, a Bearspaw native, and Snith, who has family connections to Springbank and the Cochrane area, had already surprised everyone by qualifying for the Games. After all, the two are less than one year out of high school and rookies on the World Cup circuit.

In the weeks leading up to the Games, Snith said he and Walker were “flying by the seat of our pants” as the community turned out in droves at local events to support the young Olympians.

And the drama didn’t end for the sliding duo, who had been paired together just two years prior, when they arrived in Vancouver.

Top: Local luge competitors Tristan Walker and Justin Snith wave to the thousands in attendance at the Whistler Sliding Centre after completing their Olympic runs. The duo, who are rookies on the World Cup circuit this season, ended up 15th. Photo by Bruce Walker.

The day of the opening ceremonies, Georgian luge competitor Nodar Kumaritashvili died after a crash in training on the Olympic track. As a result, officials lowered the starts for all luge competitions and made minor modifications to the track.

Walker and Snith were forced to begin their runs at the junior start; the much-discussed home-field advantage for the Canadian luge team, which had spent countless hours training from the normal starts in Whistler, had been lost

“I think we would have had a lot better chance if we had gone from the original start,” Walker said. “I think it was a freak accident. It was really terrible what happened, the worst thing that could happen. They made the changes they had to make to the track, but I don’t think it was necessary to move the starts.”

Having said that, both Walker and Snith said they were satisfied with finishing 15th. Snith noted that all of the long hours spent training were made worthwhile when he and Walker reached the bottom of the Whistler track and were completely overwhelmed by the thousands of screaming Canadian fans in attendance.

“I am still at a loss over all of it,” Snith said. “It was truly indescribable.”

In that crowd was Walker’s father Bruce. He described the crowd’s deafening roar as “absolutely amazing.”
“From the moment they called their names, to the (start) to the time they stepped off the track it was just constant cheering and cowbells and people,” he said. “It was the biggest party ever.”

Tristan Walker and Justin Snith definitely had one of the more boisterous cheering sections at the Olympic luge competition. From left to right: Max Linnell, Lochlan Walker, Andrew Pifko, Matt Medryk, Amy Ostick, Josh Hartloper, Jessica Phillips and Asia Walker. Photo by Bruce Walker.

Tristan said the wild atmosphere has continued off the luge track as well, as he and Snith have journeyed to numerous other events to support their Canadian teammates.

“There are just so many people. I have never seen anything like it,” Tristan said. “My favourite part is the spontaneous outbreak of O Canada in the streets. It’s awesome.”

And their first taste of Olympic competition has only fueled the duo’s desire to continue sliding and hopefully take a run at gold at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. When their two runs were combined together, the young Canadian team ended up roughly 1.5 seconds behind the gold medalists from Austria — a lifetime in a sport like luge, where winners are often decided by thousandths of a second

“Some of the older, more legendary sliders are moving on,” Tristan said.
“I don’t think there’s a better time to be starting a doubles luge career.”

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The signs of a gifted young hockey player are all there.

A team-first mentality, the ability to compete against more experienced players and a knack for putting the puck in the net. And the best part of all is that she’s just 14 years of age.

Yes, Cochrane’s Samantha Sutherland is a coaches’ dream, just ask her current bench boss Mikko Makela.

“She’s a very good player, very skilled, everything’s good,” said Makela, current hockey director and head coach at Warner Hockey School in southern Alberta where Sutherland debuted this season. “She’s a ninth grade player who plays like an eleventh grade player.”

After roughly 50 games with Sutherland under his direction, Makela — a Finnish professional hockey player who spent six seasons in the NHL between 1985 and 1990, has already declared her the most skilled 14-year-old female hockey player in Canada.

“That’s what I believe, there are maybe other people who think a little differently about some other players, but I’m not too far I don’t think,” he said.

Sutherland made the jump to the Warner Warriors midget team directly from peewee hockey in Cochrane. Competing with her team in the Junior Women’s Hockey League — featuring elite teams from all over North America — often forces the 5’2”, 122-pound forward to line up against players as much as five years older than her.

None of it seems to have slowed down her offensive production, however, as Sutherland sits third on Warner in scoring with 21 goals and 21 assists — an even split for a player who prides herself on her playmaking skills.

“I try to always work hard every shift and try to set up good scoring chances for my team,” Sutherland said. “I try to control the play as much as I can.”

Sutherland said her first year at Warner has been better than she ever imagined.

“Being away from my family took a bit of time to adjust to but everyone involved in the program here is so nice and has been so supportive to me, they are like my second family,” she said. “Also, adjusting to playing Midget AAA was a real challenge because the play is so fast and most of the players are quite a bit older than me.”

As well, the small-town atmosphere in Warner, which at a population of slightly more than 300 people makes Cochrane seem like a metropolis, has quickly grown on Sutherland.

“Everyone in the town knows us and says hi, it makes you feel special,” she explained. “If you come to a home game on Saturday night you will see a lot of Warner pride and fans who haven’t missed a home game in six years.”

Now, Sutherland will take a brief hiatus from Warner and head north to the Lakeland Region for the Alberta Winter Games Feb. 4-7. There, she will serve as captain on a Zone 2 girls hockey team featuring seven fellow Cochranites.

It will be the young forward’s second trip to the Games as she helped Zone 2 capture silver in 2008.
Zone 2 head coach Claude Vilgrain, a former NHLer in his own right who now coaches the Calgary Bantam AAA Outlaws, said choosing Sutherland as his captain was a no-brainer.

“She has the experience, the skill level, awareness and hockey sense that is above her age level,” Vilgrain said. “She is a very smart player and very driven player as well and that helps.”

Other Cochranites on the team are Hannah Olenyk, Emily Potts, Cylenna Alexander, Andie Boeckman, Channia Alexander as well as netminders Jade Walsh and Kirsten Chamberlin. Chamberlin, specifically, was a surprising selection for the team as she is just 11 years old — the minimum age required to participate in the Games.

“We just had no choice but to pick her, she did what she had to do,” Vilgrain said of Chamberlin, who stops pucks for the division-leading Cochrane Rockies Tier 1 Peewee girls team of the Rocky Mountain Female Hockey League.

As for projections on how his team will perform, Vilgrain said they will be competitive but face stiff competition from the Calgary players on the Zone 3 team — including his own daughter Cassandra — and the Red Deer team representing Zone 4.

“Chemistry is the key,” he said. “The teams have to come out of the gate pretty quick and the ones that are able to do this will be the most successful.”
Sutherland, meanwhile, is excited for the competition to get underway.

“I just try to lead by example and try to keep the team positive and focused on playing our best,” she said. “If you are out there working hard the whole team will work hard.”

And if she has it her way, Sutherland hopes that hard work will someday lead her to Division 1 college hockey and possibly a spot on Team Canada.

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Cochrane archer James Webster doesn’t need a mirror to correct the finer points of his pre-shot routine, his twin brother Mark does it for him.

The two 15-year-olds, who have been perfecting their skills with a bow every day for roughly seven years, are classified as mirror-image twins, meaning they are identical, but James is right-handed and Mark is a lefty. This setup works well in archery practice because the two face each other when they line up to fire.

“It’s about having fun. We don’t care who comes first as long as the other is second,” James said. “It’s like we have our own personal coaches who watch us while we watch them . . . I think if I didn’t have my big brother to help me I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

Mark, who is one minute older, said that if he and James had it their way they would practice 12-15 hours a day or more.

Their infatuation with the sport began at a non-electric amusement park back home in England. Just eight years old at the time, both Mark and James spent most of the day firing traditional longbows at an on-site range.

“They must have stayed there for three hours. They didn’t go around the rest of the park,” recalls the twins’ father Tony Webster.

Tony signed the boys up for at a nearby club where coaches quickly determined that the two were naturals.

In September 2008, the Websters moved to Cochrane and Mark and James became members at the Cochrane Archery Centre. They practice twice a week in Calgary and daily in the basement of their house where Tony has setup a makeshift range.

“Back home the coaches had a lot longer to work with us and they taught us the basics,” Mark said. “Out here the coaches are really good, they have worked with the Koreans who are the world champions.”

Now, the twins’ seeming obsession with finding the bulls-eye has earned them tickets to the Alberta Winter Games, held Feb. 4-7 in Alberta’s Lakeland region, where they will compete in the ages 15-17 recurve bow division.

Scores earned by fellow archers from around the province are not made public so Mark said it will be very interesting to see how he stacks up to the competition.

“Consistency is the key,” Mark said. “You have to be like a robot and concentrate. If even one of your steps is off — your foot’s off, your grip is too high, where you rest the string to your chin, anything — it can throw you off.”

James added, “There’s just so many variables, there are so many things that can go wrong. That’s the fun of it, being able to perfect everything that could go wrong.”

While many archers have switched to a high-tech compound bow, James and Mark prefer the tradition recurve style because it requires more skill to perfect and is the only discipline contested at the Olympics.

“It’s a dark side because it’s ridiculously easy,” Mark said of the compound bow.

“There’s a magnified scope and you pull a trigger, you’re not shooting normally, it’s like a gun.”

Beyond the archery range, the Websters said they have enjoyed life in Cochrane a great deal; both Mark and James attend school at Cochrane High.

“We went to a few schools and they didn’t feel right but we went there and it was perfect,” James said of his school. “There’s no other place we want to be.”

The twins said they view the Alberta Games as a building block to bigger things in the future, as both have dreams of representing Canada in archery at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

“We live in Canada and we want to shoot for Canada,” James said.

And, staying true to their brotherly bond, neither Mark nor James was willing to declare himself better than the other.

In Britain, James was club champion, but Mark was more consistent week-to week.

“It really depends on the week,” Mark said.

“There’s no real way to determine who is better,” James added.

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