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CALGARY – Yohan Eskrick-Parkinson couldn’t have imagined when his high school Halloween costume was a Jamaican bobsledder that he’d eventually intersect with that world of sleds and ice.

He grew up in Calgary diving competitively. He represented Jamaica at both the 2023 and 2024 world aquatics championships in a bid to qualify for the Olympic Games in Paris.

He didn’t fulfil that dream, but another one has arrived quickly. At almost six-foot-two, Eskrick-Parkinson was unusually tall for a diver, but that frame gives him the potential power to push a bobsled.

After attending testing and push camps provincially and nationally in the summer and fall, Eskrick-Parkinson will slide down a track for the first time in his life Thursday in Whistler, B.C., with the goal of doing that for Canada at an Olympic Games.

“I’m just looking forward to it because it’s another sport that’s fast and it’s aggressive on the body and that’s what diving is like with flips and everything,” said the 24-year-old.

“I’ve done all the levels of sport, except for the Olympics. And I thought, ‘you know what? If there’s a chance to go perform at that level or higher, again, I might as well take it and contribute.’ And that’s a huge opportunity that I can’t deny.”

Eskrick-Parkinson’s father Desmond emigrated from Jamaica to Canada in the 1990s. His mother Melissa lived in Calgary during the 1988 Olympic Games. The underdog Jamaican bobsled team there inspired the 1993 movie “Cool Runnings.”

Eskrick-Parkinson knew the story well while attending Calgary’s National Sport School at WinSport, which was the site of the ’88 sliding track.

“Cool Runnings was a big movie we watched pretty much every year of high school,” he said. “There’s a lot of connection there.”

But his sport was diving until he retired earlier this year.

Eskrick-Parkinson competed for Alberta in the Canada Games in 2017 and in the Canadian junior diving championships in 2018 before joining Northwestern University’s NCAA diving team for four years.

He felt his best chance at qualifying for Paris was in synchronized diving.

Jamaican diver Yona Knight-Wisdom was similarly tall, which Eskrick-Parkinson said made them a good synchro pair. The duo placed 13th at this year’s world championship in Qatar.

Eskrick-Parkinson studied neuroscience at Northwestern. He’s applied to medical schools while he pursues bobsled.

He was working out in a Calgary gym in the spring when Jamaican-born brakeman Lascelles Brown, who pushed Canada to two-man Olympic silver in 2006 and four-man bronze in 2010, suggested bobsled to him.

“I thought ‘if I can adopt this mentality, this hard work and get big and get fast, maybe I can do it’ because having him say that is a huge, huge honour,” Eskrick-Parkinson said.

It’s common for athletes from power sports such as track and field, rugby and football to graduate to bobsled.

A diving background might be unusual, but Eskrick-Parkinson says power is needed to launch from a springboard and his body awareness from diving’s acrobatics can make him a fast learner in a different sport.

“I’m a really good jumper, and that’s very related to running,” he said.

“Diving is super technical. Every single dive we do, we’re looking to our coach, and we do 60 to 100 dives a day. I can use the same process here, where I am going to push the sled, I’m going to get corrections, and I’m going to get better.”

Bobsled pushing technique and how to load the sled on the run can be learned relatively quickly.

“I could tell he had an athletic ability just from his first few touches on the sled,” said Eskrick-Parkinson’s pilot Taylor Austin.

“He has already a mentality around high-performance training and high-performance sport, so I felt like it was an easy transition for him.

“You can tell he’s been putting in the work. It’s great to see that he’s trying to take advantage of this opportunity that he has to to try a second sport and excel at it.”

Eskrick-Parkinson’s first run down Whistler’s track will be a reckoning, however, as Austin says he’s seen the odd athlete get on a plane and go home after their first time going 150 kilometres per hour down it.

Eskrick-Parkinson says years of centrifugal forces from spinning in the air might make that first slide less daunting.

“There’s photos of me on the internet where I’m in a tuck position, hands on my shins flipping, and my face is just spread out because I’m just all stretched from the G-force,” he explained.

“I’m anticipating the same thing. I’m sitting in that sled. My head’s down, I’m tucked in, and I’m just going to be taking these corners.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2024.

Veteran goalkeeper Erin McLeod, whose soccer career has taken her to Sweden, Germany, Iceland and the Unites States, is coming back to Canada as the first player signed by the Northern Super League’s Halifax Tides FC.

The 41-year-old McLeod announced her retirement from international football in January 2023, after 119 caps. But the native of St. Albert, Alta., continued her club career, most recently with Stjarnan FCin Iceland.

The Northern Super League is slated to kick off in April with teams in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa as well as Halifax.

“I’ve wanted this league since I was a kid,” McLeod said in an interview.

“I’m 41 years young and that’s a reality,” she added. “But I definitely want to compete. I’m just excited to be able to extend my career, and, honestly, to come home.”

McLeod is the new league’s fifth player signing, following forward Jade Kovacevic (AFC Toronto), midfielder Charlotte Bilbault and goalkeeper Gabrielle Lambert (both Montreal Roses FC) and midfielder Farkhunda Muhtaj (Calgary Wild FC).

“Bringing Erin into our team is an important step for Halifax Tides FC,” Halifax sporting director Amit Batra said in a statement. “Erin is passionate about Canada finally having our own domestic women’s league and knows there is so much talent in our country that goes unnoticed.

“Her extensive experience at the highest levels of the game will help guide our team and inspire young athletes across the country. We’re proud to have her as the Tides’ first signing.”

McLeod has family ties to Halifax and has spent time there working as an equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility consultant.

“I met a lot of wonderful people there,” she said. “The sense of community and a lot of what they’re doing inclusive spaces is something I’m passionate about.

“And, of course, my sister lives there with her family. And my partner and I just had a fresh baby so we’re going to need family support while we take on this new adventure.”

McLeod and her wife, Iceland international midfielder Gunny Jonsdottir, had a baby boy 10 days ago.

McLeod has spent the last two seasons in Iceland, working on her coaching licences while playing. She had been transitioning to a coaching role but says her desire to keep playing was reinvigorated by news of the new Canadian women’s league.

“My motivation started coming back. And after about a month of not playing any games, I started playing games and playing really really well.”

McLeod last played for Canada on Oct. 26, 2021, in a 1-0 friendly win over New Zealand in Montreal — her 47th clean sheet.

She was in goal for the Canadian women’s bronze-medal run at the 2012 London Olympics and started throughout the 2015 World Cup on home soil. She was an alternate with the team that won gold at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 but dressed for the game against Chile when Kailen Sheridan stepped in for the injured Stephanie Labbé.

McLeod was 19 when she made her Canada senior debut in a 4-0 victory over Wales in March 2002 at the Algarve Cup.

She has survived a string of injuries since then, with five knee surgeries and one shoulder operation.

“I’ve definitely changed the way that I’m training and also changed the way I speak to myself and deal with mistakes,” she said. “I’m enjoying it, probably the most I have as long as I can remember. Because I’m embracing the good and the bad. I’m just excited to keep playing.”

McLeod began her career with the Vancouver Whitecaps in the USL W-League in 2004. She went on to play for the Washington Freedom, Sweden’s Dalsjofors GoIF, Chicago Red Stars, Houston Dash and Sweden’s FC Rosengard and Vaxjo DFF before joining the Orlando Pride in February 2020 and being loaned to Stjarnan.

At the collegiate level, she played two years at Southern Methodist University and two at Penn State. As a senior, she led the led the Nittany Lions to an undefeated regular season in 2005 when she was a MAC Hermann Trophy semifinalist and Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year.

McLeod has many strings to her bow.

She has long served as an LGBTQ spokeswoman. In 2014, she combined with fellow Olympian Adam van Koeverden, now parliamentary secretary to the minister of health and minister of sport, in the successful campaign to add sexual orientation to the Olympic Charter.

In 2019, McLeod launched the Mindful Project, developed in tandem with Bethel University professor Rachel Lindvall. The goal is to help focus more on positive thoughts while moving past negative ones.

Away from soccer, McLeod has worked as an artist, musician and entrepreneur.

—

Follow @NeilMDavidson on X platform

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2024.

OSHU CITY, Japan (AP) — Shohei Ohtani’s hometown in northern Japan is a rural place, famous for its high-quality Maesawa beef, its history of making traditional ironware and the intense green hills and mountains that surround it.

Japanese call such places “inaka” — roughly translated as the “countryside.” No glitz, quiet streets and up north — cold winters. It’s only 300 miles (500 kilometers) from Tokyo, but it seems further away.

These days, Oshu City is most famous for Ohtani himself, and the intense pride local people show for one of the game’s greatest ever players. He started in the local Little League with the Mizusawa Pirates, played for Hanamaki Higashi High School — a route that led him to the World Series. His Los Angeles Dodgers lead the New York Yankees 3-0, and fans here will be tuned in when LA tries to clinch the title early Wednesday morning local time.

The town honors Ohtani at every turn. And to experience it, start first with hairdresser Hironobu Kanno’s salon called “Seems.”

The hair salon that became a shrine to Shohei Ohtani

The waiting room is a museum dedicated to Ohtani with about 300 artifacts hung, stacked and squeezed into every corner. Even more items are in storage.

There are signed Dodgers and Angels jerseys, dozen of autographed baseballs, bats, shoes, caps, gloves, bobbleheads, photos of Othani and his wife Mamiko Tanaka, shirts emblazoned with images of his dog Decopin (Decoy in English), stuffed animals, pillows and life-size cutouts of the superstar.

Kanno said many fans come to town on a kind of “pilgrimage,” and his shop is often part of that.

“My customers and those who come to visit Ohtani’s hometown really enjoy seeing the collection, and I think it is a very effective way for them to feel closer to Ohtani,” he said.

The collecting began innocently when Kanno attended a baseball game on May 23, 2013 — the first professional game in which Ohtani batted and pitched. This was for Japan’s Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, and Kanno came back with a ball signed by Ohtani.

“When I put the ball with Ohtani’s autograph in my salon, the customers were very happy to see it,” Kanno said. “So I started to collect goods little by little.”

The rest is history.

He said his most treasured item is a cap signed by Japanese players who defeated the United States in the final of last year’s World Baseball Classic at the Tokyo Dome.

Nanno confessed that the cost of Ohtani goods keeps rising. He suggested he’d spent about 10 million yen — perhaps $100,000 — on Ohtani merchandise over a decade, and guessed the value might be five or six times as much.

He said he’d never met Ohtani nor his mother and father — Toru and Kayako — and the superstar has never seen the collection. He said eventually, he’d like to see it in a real museum and added he wasn’t in it for financial gain.

A small town becomes a pilgrimage point for the Ohtani-obsessed

Head across town to the city hall if you need more Ohtani memorabilia. One corner is loaded with photos of Ohtani, newspaper clips and pennants reminding that he won the American League MVP in 2023 and 2021. He’s the favorite to be the National League MVP this season.

The centerpiece of the city hall collection is a replica of Ohtani’s right hand. The golden hand allows you to grasp it and watch a video with Ohtani showing how the replica was made.

Keigo Kishino and his wife Chiaki said they traveled in one day from the western city of Osaka — by plane and train — just to shake the the hand.

“He is a source of energy for me, or something like that,” Chiaki said.

Jeffrey Kingston, who teaches history at Temple University in Japan, described Ohtani as a “combo of pure skill, pride and nationalism that make him irresistible to the Japanese public, and anyone remotely interested in the game, extending even to people who never really cared about baseball.”

His was referring partially to his wife Machiko Osawa, a professor of economics at Japan Women’s University. She is not a baseball fan. But Othani got her interested — at least in the short term.

“Ohtani changed the image of Japanese and helps transcend their complex feelings toward Westerners,” she explained.

“When I was young, there was a huge gap in ability between American players and Japanese players. Japanese players are shorter and not able to compete, but now Ohtani changed the image of Japanese baseball players. He is tall, fit and a superstar.”

Ohtani’s Oshu City impact is unlike any other ballplayer

Ohtani is the only MLB player from Oshu City, although others have come from nearby. Pitcher Yusei Kikuchi also attended Hanamaki Higashi High School, and Rintaro Sasaki — the son of Ohtani’s high school coach — is a phenom who skipped professional baseball in Japan altogether and currently plays at Stanford.

But no one generates buzz back home like Ohtani. Earlier this year, a local rice paddie was used as an “artist’s canvas” with Ohtani’s image in Dodger’s blue and wearing No. 17 — with Decoy alongside — cut into the green field. The likeness if unmistakable.

Oshu Mayor Jun Kuranari talked about Ohtani as an inspiration, and the rice paddie might be an example. He also brought up Ohtani as a role model.

“He plays with such a pure heart, and his performance is amazing,” the mayor said. “But what I think is also amazing is that he is able to stay humble while playing so well. He is a role model for everyone, and also makes the locals proud.”

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