January 19, 2004
Results of the Western Canadian
Team Masters
click
here to view photos
The following is an excerpt from the personal journal
of the BC Mainland Team Captain Garett Hennigan as he recovers
from Post Traumatic Loss-To-A-Big-Island-In-BC Syndrome incurred
at the Western Canadian Team Masters held in Calgary on January
14 to 16, 2005.
Patient Journal - Day 4 - Wednesday January 19,
2005 at BC Mainland Psychiatric Institute and Therapy Centre,
East Wing, Room 213
The therapy is going well. My small room with the stark white
walls is very peaceful with the lovely sunshine streaming through
the heavy metal grate covering my one tiny window. It is almost
like a..like a miniature squash court. The other patients are
quite friendly and the food is good except my repeated requests
for my morning green-sludge-banana-apple-protein drink, chocolate
chip cookies, Sprite, and potato chips have fallen on deaf ears.
I am on day 4 and all the doctors are very encouraging and say
I am making excellent progress. However, the lead therapist says
that to make my next step of recovery I will have to go back through
some potentially painful regression therapy and relive the events
of the Calgary weekend. I have been strongly resisting this approach
for various personal and philosophical reasons since it was initially
suggested way back on day one when I entered the facility. The
therapist pointed out that though I had experienced some significant
trauma in the team loss to Vancouver Island over the past weekend
there were also a lot of very good times to be remembered, so
today I finally agreed to the procedure. The therapist said
I would have to go back to the beginning, recount, and review
in writing all the events, both big and small, and "leave
no stone unturned" in the quest for a full recovery and to
learn a lesson so I can move forward and perhaps resume a normal
life again. Well here goes with my journal..
Two seven-player teams from BC participated in this year's tournament
which was held at the Glencoe Club in Calgary. The BC Mainland
Team consisted of Khoon Chua, Garett Hennigan, Kevin Kydd, Gavin
Cooper, Laura Ramsay, Brook Macey, and Sue Wastie. The BC Van
Isle Team consisted of Carl Souchereau, Lee Clackson, Tom Ralph,
Gerry Poulton, Lorrie Baildham, Cindy Brown, and Cathy Clackson.
There were six other teams participating, two from Alberta, and
one from each of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Yukon, and Ontario. The
Ontario team was there for the second year as a very active participant
in the tournament. Even though Ontario is technically not part
of western Canada, there team
enthusiasm has made them honorary Western Canadians so we are
now ready to officially assimilate them ("Resistance is futile")
as a new Western Canadian province.
The various teams flew into a very cold Calgary (-25 C) on Friday
afternoon. A small point of trivia: We discovered that West Jet
accepts Costco picture identity cards as a substitute for a driver's
license photo
ID. At first, we thought it was just another West Jet joke but
when my fellow teammates dared me to try it, sure enough there
was no problem and they let me board. I can hardly wait to apply
for my Costco international passport!
The eight teams were then divided into two pools, with round robins
in each pool on Friday night and Saturday to decide who would
be playing in the finals on Sunday. The BC Mainland team drew
the strong Ontario team for the first round on Friday night. From
these early matches came our team encouragement cheer of "Stay
with the Program" which meant: Hit the ball soft and deep
on the bouncy, high- altitude courts. This chant was used liberally
throughout the matches and conveniently circumvented the rule
of
"no coaching during a game". Though Gavin and I managed
to squeak out five game victories, this technique did not help
us enough to win two very close matches where talented Khoon was
not able to prevail over a very determined Mike Bertin and Kevin
was not able to sufficiently tire out the father of
all energizer bunnies, Johnny Frederick. These unfortunate losses
led to an overall 2-5 match loss instead of 4-3 win.
Saturday came very early with a 9 am start against the well rested
Alberta 1 team. We were a little overmatched, and lost again.
Saturday afternoon finally gave us a win against Saskatchewan
where, I accidentally discovered a new motivation technique. While
we were watching Kevin struggling in a
match with Bruce MacDonald, the courtside phone rang a foot away
from me so I answered it. It was Kevin's wife Sue calling and
she wanted to talk to him about some spring holiday travel plans.
She said it wasn't an emergency and to have him call after the
game but within 30 minutes. I waited until the end of the 4th
game to pass on the message. Well, well, well I was astonished
at the fire that was lit up under Kevin when he received this
distracting news in the middle of the match. He was instantly
energized
and was ready to take on the world as soon as the other team members
could remove his hands from around my neck and he kept screaming
"Why are you telling me this in the middle of the match.
You are supposed to be the captain! What kind of coaching is that?"
as they pulled him off me. We finally got him back in the court
and were able to redirect him to surge back and quickly win the
fifth game. This new motivational coaching technique has now been
dubbed the "Call Home" technique or in short form
the "E.T." technique. The victory over Saskatchewan
set up a 5/6 playoff and a rematch of last year against the BC
Van Isle team.
Saturday evening consisted of a team dinner and party at the Glencoe.
A fabulous buffet and desert bar allowed the participants to refuel.
The BC Mainland team table entertainment consisted of a series
of enchanting stories by Brook Macey. One of her stories led to
all her team members being very careful about ever accidentally
calling Brook any type of derogatory name, now that they knew
what happened to the poor boy who called her a less than flattering
name back in third grade. There were other stories but these were
sealed under team confidentiality protocol rules. There was also
pool and darts afterwards where the Sue Wastie and I soon discovered
that Lee Clackson and Tom Ralph spend way too many
hours playing darts in the Victoria fire station.
Afterwards, we proceeded on a late night road trip to the Metropolitan
Club. On entering it was soon discovered that the packed miniature
dance floor would never accommodate 20 exuberant squash players
plus Johnny Frederick (who needs a dance floor all to himself)
and that "no smoking" had not been successfully implemented
so the BC contingent decided to head back to the hotel on the
tournament bus for our own party. Just as the bus started to move
out we discovered that we had left one of our own, Cindy Brown,
behind. Carl Souchereau drew on his military background and informed
us that "a marine never leaves a marine behind" whereupon
he conceived a well thought-out extraction plan. In what was dubbed
"Operation Stinky", volunteer Brook Macey employed Sidney
Bristow-like techniques to somehow leap-frog a 40-person lineup
and retrieve Cindy alive with honor intact.
After staying up to 2 am, the 7 am wakeup call on Sunday morning
came too soon. The two BC teams faced off for 5th place. Tiger
Balm was a "Platinum Sponsor" for the Mainland Team
(known as the" Tiger Balm Bending Tigers" aka "TBBT")
and we shared a large amount between the teams to ease the aching
joints and muscles of the previous two days. The deciding match
turned out to be the Kevin Kydd and Tom Ralph encounter. Tom was
definitely "in the zone" and managed to come back from
down 3-8 in the fourth to win 10-8 with some remarkable gets and
winners. It happened so fast I was unable to implement another
E.T maneuver to further motivate Kevin as I was sure it was going
to 5 games. Even with Lorrie Baildham having to default her match
due to a left leg injury, the BC Van Isle Team still won 4-3.
This dramatic win by the Island team was foreshadowed by the excellent
showing of several of their team members in many of the age categories
at the Hollyburn Nationals last May and has ushered in new era
and perhaps a shift in the power base of squash in BC. I am sure
there will be some
interesting rivalries at the upcoming CanAm championship in April.
In the other Sunday matchups, Alberta 1 defeated Alberta 2 for
first place, Manitoba defeated Ontario for third place, and I
think the Saskatchewan defeated Yukon for seventh.
In conclusion, the above regression therapy helped me to see that
my fatal mistake as team captain was to not implement the "Call
Home / E.T." motivational technique with Kevin sooner on
Sunday. Lesson learned. I will be ready next time. I can now start
to move forward.
I would like to thank Ian Bell, Danny Shannon, all the volunteers,
and especially Glenn Stark for all their efforts to make the weekend
such a success and so hospitable. I hope to continue with my recovery
and be out of this facility in time to be able to participate
in next year's event which will probably be held in BC or Edmonton.
Best Regards,
Garett
