Team Saskatchewan comes out on top at NAIG

Lyle Daniels wasn't surprised by Team Saskatchewan's first place finish at the North American Indigenous Games (NAIG) held in Denver, Colorado in July. That's because Saskatchewan athletes have a history of dominating the games, placing on top of the standings at every NAIG competition ever held with the exception of the games hosted by Winnipeg in 2002 when they placed second behind Team Manitoba.
"I would like to think that I was surprised but I had such a great team here that they just helped us immensely with getting our team together," said Daniels, Team Saskatchewan's chef de mission for NAIG 2006. "I was confident, maybe because of the number of people that we took down there."
Each of the 33 participating teams was allowed to bring 600 people, however Daniels arranged to have 750 people travel to Denver, including athletes, coaches, mission staff, support staff and chaperones.
"I think we were the largest team that participated in the games," he said.
Daniels credits the dedication the athletes had towards their training and the organizing team that helped prepare the athletes for the games for the team's success.
"We're just getting good in organizing for NAIG," he said. "I give a great deal of credit to my mission staff because we have a great group of people who helped out in every area. They're committed to ensuring that the right group of kids was selected. We also do a really great job ensuring that there are no politics involved in the selection because that's always a difficult thing."
Daniels also believes Team Saskatchewan's motto helped motivate the team to succeed. Their motto was commitment to excellence, "and I'm so proud of that," he said. "I'm positive and feel confident about the fact that all of us were committed to excellence and that helped to our overall championship win."
According to the unofficial medal count, Team Saskatchewan came home from Colorado with 78 gold, 89 silver and 42 bronze, bringing the total medal count to 209. Second place went to Team Ontario who walked away with a total of 96 medals followed by New Mexico in third place with 89 medals. British Columbia left Colorado in fourth place with 69 medals and Team Alberta claimed fifth place with a total of 62 medals.
NAIG offered competition in 16 sports for youth between the ages of 13 to 19 and adults 20 and over. Team Saskatchewan had athletes competing in just about all of the age categories for every sport except lacrosse.
"Actually, I was really surprised that there weren't more teams competing in lacrosse because out of all the age categories, there were only five lacrosse teams," said Daniels. "Also, for a traditional sport you would think that that would be full. For some reason it's one of those sports that doesn't seem to attract enough people."
Although Team Saskatchewan took first place, Daniels said the athletes weren't given the proper acknowledgement of their overall win at the games.
"We weren't crowned the champions because the results weren't done until two weeks after the games were over," he said.
He blames the lack of people working at the games for the situation.
"We just hosted the Canada games in Regina in 2005 and staff wise we had like 60 people and the NAIG had like eight people," said Daniels. "So, to have a games that is four times as big as the Canada games, athlete wise, and to have only eight people to make it happen was upsetting."
A month-and-a-half after games, Daniels said he is still looking to be awarded at some point and he said he would like to see this happen at one of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) chief assemblies.
"I would like to see the NAIG president come out and present it to us," said Daniels.
Aside from not being crowned the overall champions, Daniels said he was upset because of the lack of coverage of the games in local media.
"What bothered me was after the opening ceremonies, there was nothing in the newspaper the next day," he said. "There was 8,000 athletes participating and the fact that we were at the stadium where the Denver Bronco's play, it was very sad that there was nothing about it."
Nineteen-year-old Benny Jimmy feels quite proud knowing that he contributed to Team Saskatchewan's overall win.
"The whole experience was pretty awesome," the recent high school graduate said.
Jimmy, along with the other nine players on the juvenile boys volleyball team, served up gold medals in a win against Team Ontario in the final game.
"I had a lot of fun playing volleyball and of course meeting people from different provinces was pretty cool too," said Jimmy.
The student from Thunderchild First Nation admits that his team didn't practice all too much before attending the games but they all seemed to come together as a team on the Gold Crown Field House court in Denver.
At the end of August, Jimmy hopes to enroll in RCMP cadet training.
"It's something that I've always wanted to do after sports and now that I'm done, I'm going to the RCMP like I always planned," he said.
Although this was Daniels' first crack at the role of chef de mission, he said he would definitely consider doing it again. "I would love to do this again," said Daniels, whose full-time job is as director of sport, culture, youth and recreation for the FSIN. "It was a huge undertaking, it was really stressful but now that it's over and we did so well, I'm looking forward to the games in 2008."
Daniels said that, in the next couple months, Team Saskatchewan would begin preparing for NAIG 2008, to be held in Cowichan, B.C., with an eye to claiming a sixth overall championship.