Athletes representing Team Alberta are training to be the best in their sport at the Special Olympics Canada Winter Games.
The seventh national winter festival for athletes with an intellectual disability starts Feb. 28 in St. Albert and Jasper for 78 provincial medal hopefuls.
“It’s looking really good for us going into nationals,” said Vince MacIntyre, a team manager for Special Olympics Alberta.
A personal best program offered by Special Olympics Alberta is helping the athletes prepare for the Games.
“Each athlete signs a contract of commitment to the training that’s dictated by the coaches and that is physical fitness and sport training. A lot of them also keep a log as to the training they do on a daily basis,” MacIntyre said. “We’ve had a lot of success with it. We’ve seen a lot of progress with all of our teams and athletes.”
Having the Games in their home province will also give the athletes that extra edge to succeed.
“There is going to be a lot more fans out at all the venues cheering for Alberta so we’ve been trying to stress that excitement to all the athletes,” MacIntyre said. “It’s really contagious. The coaches and mission staff are just as excited as the athletes. It’s a pretty unique opportunity.”
The recent training camp in St. Albert and Edmonton for the athletes and 23 coaches and 11 mission staff set the stage for the Games.
“It was highly successful. It was one of the better training camps I’ve ever been involved with Special Olympics,” MacIntyre said. “We had some good training opportunities, and of course there were some exciting opportunities for the athletes with [Olympic gold medallists] Marc Kennedy and Jamie Sale helping out.”
More than 650 athletes and 300 coaches and mission staff from 10 provinces and two territories will attend the Games. The venues for cross-country skiing, curling, figure skating, snowshoeing, floor hockey and speed skating are in St. Albert. Jasper is hosting alpine skiing at Marmot Basin.
The Games are also a national qualifier for the 2013 Special Olympics World Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
MacIntyre will serve as Team Alberta’s sport manager for floor hockey at the Games.
“It’s a good fit for me because that’s what I coach as well,” said the Sherwood Park resident. “In the past the team managers would maintain that role right though the Games and then we would assign extra mission staff as sport managers. Now what we’ve decided to do is once we get to Games the team managers’ role was actually redundant so going into the Games we lose the team manager title and then we’re just sport managers. We’re assigned a venue and sport and we’re responsible for that sport.”
MacIntyre was also a provincial team manager at the 2010 Special Olympics Canada Summer Games in London, Ont.
“We get involved planning the team as far as coaches, mission staff and a lot of the logistics and the up front planning. We also get involved in the planning of the training camps.”
The team managers also provide support for Johnny Byrne, the Chef de Mission for Team Alberta.
“He does a lot of the recruiting for the coaches and then he consults with the management staff just to make the final decisions,” MacIntyre said. “Once we have the head coaches involved, they really take over running the sports and the training programs.”
MacIntyre said it’s easier to find coaches for team sports at the Games than individual sports.
“The head coaches of the teams that were successful [in qualifying for the Games] are brought on board to keep training with their teams,” he said. “Speed skating is really specialized and that might be one where it’s a little bit more of a challenge to get coaches.
“But for the most part Special Olympics is pretty good. There are a lot of high quality volunteers out there.”
MacIntyre has been active in the Special Olympics movement for 10 years and is a floor hockey volunteer.
“I have a son who has a handicap and he competed in generic sports until he was about 14 and then he couldn’t quite do it confidently. He is still a good athlete so we got him involved in Special Olympics and that’s kind of how I got into it as a volunteer and then due to my coaching background [in soccer] I got into coaching. Now I probably spend more time in Special Olympics than he does,” said the Enbridge Pipelines employee.
