The Canadian Goalball Championships were held in Toronto from April 17-19th. Nova Scotia made history as the first Nova Scotia team to become National goalball champions. Despite winning the gold medal at five of their last seven tournaments, Nova Scotia claimed silver medals at the 2013 and 2014 championships. The team, consisting of Oliver Pye, Peter Parsons, Simon Richard, Yvon Clement, Mason Smith, and John Courtney, were in second place after the round robin. Their round robin record included 4 wins, 1 tie and 1 loss. The scores of the round robin games were:
BC – 7 NS – 3; NS – 6 Que – 1; NS – 9 BC2 – 3; NS – 2 Alta – 2, NS – 8 Ont – 1; NS – 11 Man – 7
In the semi –finals, Nova Scotia played the third place Quebec team and defeated them by a score of 12 to 2. This set up a repeat of the teams in the 2014 final, British Columbia and Nova Scotia. The three starting players on the BC team are all members of the current Canadian Goalball Team. In the 2014 gold medal game, the two teams were tied after regulation play, two sudden death overtime periods, and a set of penalty shots. BC won the 2014 title by defeating Nova Scotia in the second round of sudden death free throws. However, Nova Scotia beat BC in the Gold Medal game at the Michigan Tournament in February 2015. That was Nova Scotia’s second consecutive gold medal win in this very prestigious goalball tournament. In the final match in Toronto, Nova Scotia displayed their very strong defensive talents and capitalized on any errors made by their opponents. Nova Scotia defeated BC by a score of 8 to zero and captured the 2015 Canadian Goalball Championships. Simon Richard, our center, was selected as Outstanding Male Player of the Tournament.
Simon Richard represented Canada at the 2014 World Championships in Finland. Oliver Pye was selected earlier this year to represent Canada at the upcoming 2015 World Goalball Championships that will be held in Korea in May. Peter Parsons was named as an alternate to that team. Nova Scotia is very excited about our prospects for having Nova Scotia team players selected to the teams that will represent Canada at the 2015 ParaPan Ams in Toronto in August as well as the 2016 Paralympics in Rio.
Our Nova Scotia ladies team did an awesome job at the 2015 Nationals. The team consisting of Jennie Bovard, Stephanie Berry, Tarah Sawler, and Kelly Boudreau have improved so much, both offensively and defensively. Despite beating the eventual Bronze Medal winners, British Columbia, by a score of 9 to 3, Nova Scotia was knocked out of the semi-finals by a 4-3 loss to Alberta. They received compliments from other provinces and before long we know that they will be bringing a medal home.

Both our men on woman’s Senior Goalball teams are going to the Canadian Goalball Senior Nationals this weekend in Toronto!

You can watch/listen to the games this weekend on the CBSA Goalball Channel.

Also follow Canadian Blind Sports on Facebook or @CanadianBlindSports on twitter for all the game results.

Good luck to both of our teams this weekend!  Come back here early next week and we’ll let you know how we did!

Blind Sports Nova Scotia Goalball is featured as a part of AMI TV’s Access Unlimited program.  Season 1, Episode 3 chronicles the city of Halifax and has a segment about Goalball.  Please watch Access Unlimited here.

The Nova Scotia girls beat BC 8-3 to win bronze at the Canadian Goalball Junior Nationals in Brantford Ontario this past weekend! This is Nova Scotia’s first ever medal in Junior Goalball.

The New Brunswick boys, with Mason Smith from Nova Scotia, played in a high scoring and entertaining game and captured gold beating Ontario 12-11 in overtime! Team Nova Scotia Senior player, Simon Richard scored the winning goal on his final Junior Nationals appearance!

Congratulations to all of our Nova Scotia Juniors on a wonderful winning weekend!

Our Nova Scotia Senior Men’s Goalball team captured Gold for the second year in a row at the Midwestern Goalball Championships in Michigan this past weekend! It was an all Canadian final with Nova Scotia defeating British Columbia 2-1 in a very close final game! The Nova Scotia Men wnet undefeated for the entire tournament!

The Nova Scotia Senior Wemen’s team also placed a very respectable 5th in the tournament with two wins!

In this winters Montreal Open Goalball tournament the Nova Scotia men captured bronze with a very convincing 7-2 victory over Quebec! The weekend only saw one loss, a very close 3-2 game agsinst the Delaware Money Men in the semi-final.

Congratulations to our Senior Men’s Goalball Team for winning Silver at the 2014 Canadian Senior Goalball Nationals in Calgary Alberta! The final Gold medal game was a very close 2-1 loss to British Columbia. The game was tied 1-1 through 2 full halves, 2 Overtime periods and was finally decided with one-one Penalty shots.

Please read the full article in The Chronicle Herald.

We’re very proud of all our Men, Women, Juniors and Coaches for a phenomenal year!

Watch online or come out and watch live if you’re in Calgary!

We’re playing at:

Calgary French and International School
700 – 77 Street SW

Both our Senior Men and Women’s teams are off to Calgary this weekend for the Canadian Goalball Nationals.  The games will be streamed live on ustream.com this Friday evening, all day Saturday and Sunday.

We’ll also be updating our twitter account @BlindSportsNS throughout the weekend.