PETERS: A great week of sports bringing people together

This week, those wearing the maple leaf will likely be cheering on Team Canada at the FIFA World Cup. We won’t need to speculate about immunization statuses and information sources.

It’s another example of sports bringing a community together.

It’s been a good week of sports bringing people together in Kamloops.

Logan Stankoven, our hometown boy, won his first Stanley Cup with his Carolina Hurricane teammates.

Stankoven led the team with 11 playoff goals and finished third in voting for the Conn Smythe Trophy, which rewards the most valuable player of the NHL playoffs.

The diminutive Stankoven proved to be not just an essential piece of the Carolina attack but an example that heart, hustle and talent can render a lack of size irrelevant.

It’s something that won’t be a surprise to the thousands of Kamloops hockey fans who have watched him thus far in his career.

On the hardwood, Kamloops’ hometown hooper was also playing for a championship.

Now 35, Kelly Olynyk is on the other end of his career arc.

He spent this season backing up teenaged superstar Victor Wembanyama on the San Antonio Spurs. His season over, he now becomes a free agent.

If this is it for his career, Olynyk can hold his head high for having represented himself, his home town and his country proudly on basketball’s biggest stages.

And then there’s the World Cup, with soccer fans able to gather in Riverside Park and cheer on a blowout win for Canada just yesterday.

Of course, soccer isn’t nearly as popular in Canada as it is virtually anywhere else in the world.

But the beauty of the World Cup – like any international sporting competition – is you don’t have to be the world’s biggest soccer fan to wear that maple leaf and cheer on your country.

That’s something we can all do together, regardless of the many fissures that would otherwise divide us.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.

by James Peters

PETERS: A great week of sports bringing people together

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