Packing ? We're not even done yet.

Dining hall at 10:30 at night.....it's always busy in there!

When I mentioned routine, we are totally into it now.
It seems every day is quite similar to the one before. In the morning, after the Core Leadership meeting, I head to WC basketball practice with the women's team. Andy is lucky as the sitting volleyball teams both practice in the Village at the gym which is actually the Cherry Street YMCA, a great new facility that will be a very nice addition to the community when this is all done. He is able to cover both teams easily. Darrell's football 7s team has played an 11 am game pretty much daily so he's off to the pitch. He then heads to York University to cover the rest of the day in Athletics. By the time I return, I have some time to deal with a few things but never enough to go away and see or cover another sport as I am often on the 4-4:30 bus back to cover basketball games for both men and women. They are usually scheduled one after the other to get more fans in the building. Then it's back in the Village either around 9:30 or closer to 11:30 depending on the time of the last game. Andy has usually moved himself to Mississauga to cover WC rugby.
We all come back to help out in clinic if people need to be seen and we close up the clinic at 11 pm.

What is now changing is most sport are not in their round robin but in their elimination matches now.
The men's WC basketball team had a good game against Puerto Rico last night. It seems they were taking things a little too lightly in the first half as PR should have been a much easier game. They got back to their usual selves and got away with a decisive win. They are now meeting Brazil in the semi-finals. The women's team is meeting Argentina today in their semi-final game. It should be a win but nobody assumes anything and they will have they game faces on. The plan is to meet USA in the finals Friday evening. The US is playing Brazil after four game tonight. It would be the same thing for the men. Canada vs USA in the finals for both teams will make for some great basketball.

A big game last night:WC rugby had their own USA vs Canada game at 8 pm. Packed with noisy fans the place was booming. They got there money's worth when the game went into the 3rd overtime only to see the US take a one point lead with 3 seconds left. Unfortunately I didn't get to see any of it other than...the last 3 seconds on the TV we have in our clinic. It has a live game feed and by the time I returned from basketball and arrived a the clinic it was literally in its final seconds.

Many of you wonder how is wheelchair rugby played. Imagining a wheelchair on a grassy pitch is difficult.... It is not played on the grass but played indoors on a surface pretty much the same size as a basketball court. Players have to have a disability in at least 3 limbs. Many, if not most, are quadriplegics. They have  varying levels of ability and can handle both their heavily armoured wheelchair and the ball. They have to carry the ball over the end zone line just like in able bodied rugby. It is easily recognized as the most "violent" sport here. Crashes are part of the sport. A very good documentary was made by the US team years ago and is still recommended viewing for everyone. The title, Murderball, reflects what the sport used to be called before the better term, Wheelchair Rugby, was adopted. Readers are encouraged to look for it. Save some time, I just looked on Netflix and it is not there.

One of the benefit of being near the games as we are getting less busy is to go and cheer our athletes and teams in other sports than the ones we cover. If I had the morning off, I could go and watch Philippe and Joel playing a bronze medal match in WC tennis but I am at the basketball court. Venues are so distant that we can't bounce from one to other quickly. This was the case in London where the massive Olympic / Paralympic Park included most of the venues and you cold go from the Village and cover a basketball game and simply walk across to see, or cover, the cyclists in the velodrome without wasting too much time. Here I can't even get from the basketball practice to the goalball game in enough time as it involves a car ride through Toronto traffic from downtown to Mississauga and I would have to arrive only to turn around and head back again for the basketball game. It could be done if we stared at our watch and literally came on and off courts as the events take place but would spend more time in traffic and vehicles than what would be considered common sense. Many sports accept this and recognize they will not have a physician at their game facility.Therapists are at all venues with teams though. Unless logistically too complicated as we are dealing with today with only one judoka competing in Whitby while our 4 doctors are all committed closer to Toronto. It would be difficult to justify sending a physician to be at the mat for a 3 minute event over 45 minutes away while we have so many teams competing closer to here. That is what we have to do with limited personnel.

Even as we are still helping our athletes stay strong and healthy, we are now planning packing up this place. All the "stuff" I unloaded when I showed up needs to get back in boxes, labelled precisely and put back on pallets. We are going to focus on medical functional areas and with more people it should be easier...I hope everyone helps out. The plan is to do as much as we can so by the time the games end on the 15th, we are almost all packed up and are only using the bare bones of our set up. The only sports left on Saturday morning are gold medal games in Football 7s, men's basketball and men's goalball. If we do things right. We can have everything all sorted out so we can go to Closing Ceremonies and only have the fear of finalizing taping things up on Sunday. Honestly, there's always more than we think and the day after Closing Ceremonies, we are often finalizing the pack up list, manifest, matching numbers on boxes with list that suddenly pop up and, by the time we look at it, it's 9 pm. My goal this year with so many keen members of our team is to get that sorted out early. Let's see if we achieve it.

I encourage everyone to spend some free time checking out great photos of these athletes on the Canadian Paralympic Committee's Facebook page. Our photographers truly put these Games in a fantastic spotlight. We need more fans though. Get tickets and come cheer!!!