Sports
by Jon Muldoon

Courcelette Public School's William Morgan (picture, right, by Ann Morgan) had a stellar day at the Toronto District Elementary School Athletics Association's City Track and Field Championships. The event was held at Birchmount Stadium on June 21, and Morgan won two gold medals, setting two new city records in the process.
He ran the 60 m Grade 6 hurdles in 9.15 seconds, beating the old city record of 9.28. Later in the day, Morgan competed in the Grade 6 boys running long jump, winning with a distance of 5.67 metres, beating out the old city record of 5.10 metres. All three of his attempts were over the old record.
Morgan's coach at Courcelette is Deneen Robertson. He also trains with the Variety Village Track Club, under the coaching of Bill Stephens and Kyle Smith.
Morgan wasn't the only East End student to medal at the City Championships. Blantyre Public School's Amy Heyd finished second in the Grade 7 girls shot put. Kersti Sorra from Glen Ames finished first in the Grade 7 girls triple jump. Secord's Miryam Yakub Aga took second place in the Grade 5 girls 1500 metre race.
Several schools had multiple medals. From Duke of Connaught, Elisha Fraser took first place in the Grade 5 boys running long jump, while Hamza Khalique finished second on the Grade 7 boys running long jump.
Balmy Beach Community School's Allison Anderson finished second in the Grade 6 girls 800 metre race, while Haley Tice took the bronze in the Grade 6 girls triple jump. Jack Day finished first in the Grade 4 boys 400 metre race.
Kew Beach Junior Public School's track team had a good day as well. Jack McBain took first place in the Grade 4 boys triple jump, while Michael Thornton pulled in a pair of medals, with first place finishes in the Grade 4 boys running long jump and the Grade 4 boys 100 metre race.
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John Barnet, a registered massage therapist at Essence Therapeutics on Queen Street East, will be heading to Europe for a high-speed summer of downhill skateboard racing. For five weeks in July and August, he will travel to France, Germany, Austria, Italy and the Czech Republic for the International Gravity Sports Association's World Cup series, hitting speeds up to (and sometimes over) 100 kph on a longboard.
“I've been skateboarding my whole life. I grew up on a hill, and as soon as I was exposed to longboarding at 16, I got right into it,” he said.
At 28, he's one of the older racers on the hill, but he's hoping the extra experience will be to his advantage. Barnet has been getting more serious about racing over the last couple years, competing in several races in Ontario and Quebec.
“From that experience, I've gauged that it's time to move up to the next level,” he said.
His experience so far also includes one high-speed crash. In an upcoming documentary titled The Escarpment Surfers, Barnet is shown crashing into a guardrail at 85 kph. Although he was unconscious for several minutes, he emerged more or less unscathed. Working in a field where he regularly encounters athletes recovering from injuries, Barnet knows how lucky he was in escaping permanent injury.
Thankfully, Barnet was wearing the full-face helmet and leather uniform of a motorcycle racer at the time of the crash. When he first started downhill longboarding he wouldn't have been quite so lucky.
“My idea at the time was that if I didn't wear padding, I wouldn't go fast,” he said.
Although Barnet still counts fun as his main motivation for skating, racing in a four-man event adds a new challenge to a sport that's usually all about picking the best line down a hill.
“If nobody else is there, you're the fastest in the world,” he said. “It's going to be kind of cool to be in a World Cup event and see how I do against the big boys."
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Toronto Beaches lacrosse player Kaitlin Tse is heading to the provincial level, after being selected for the Team Ontario Bantam Box Girls Lacrosse team. Tse will play with the best Bantam girls in the province during the Bantam Girls Lacrosse Championship of Canada in Whitby this August. Tse has played since age five in boys box and field teams, and also plays girls field lacrosse with the Toronto Stars U15 and U19 teams.