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You’re entitled to a bit of special treatment if a ball hockey team is named in your honour.
So Sam Loslo discovered on Saturday when Team Loslo held its game for more than a few minutes while their namesake participated in the opening ceremony at the Walter Gretzky Street Hockey Tournament at the Steve Brown Sports Complex at Lions Park.
The 15-year-old North Park Collegiate student stood beside Gretzky to drop the ball that officially opened the seventh annual tourney.
“Ball hockey lets me forget about everything else and just have fun,” said Loslo, who was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in February 2011.
Last year, Sam, who is in Grade 10, and a group of his friends put together a team that raised more than $1,500 for the Children’s Wish Foundation.
Sam is doing well following 25 months of chemotherapy but will still require a couple of surgeries, said his mother Trudy.
“Ball hockey lifts his spirits,” she said.
Team Loslo was among 163 teams and more than 2,000 participants in the two-day Gretzky tournament that raises funds for the Lung Association. This year’s goal is $30,000.
From sun-up to sundown, players of all ages and divisions held games on 15 rinks set up in the parking lot, and on tennis and basketball courts in Lions Park.
“It’s an amazing event,” said Sandy Lee, fund development co-ordinator with the Lung Association. “A lot of us didn’t have organized sports, but in every neighbourhood somebody had a hockey net and tennis ball.”
“But, really, the major draw is Wally.”
The affable Walter Gretzky spent hours talking and joking with players and spectators, and posing for endless snapshots.
Several players on the Go Shelf team were thrilled to have all of their bright orange jerseys signed by the world’s most famous hockey dad.
“He is awesome,” said Owen Houley, a 14-year-old Grade 8 student at St. Theresa’s School. “This isn’t Wayne’s town, it’s Walter’s town.”
Players came from all over the province for the event. Six teams, including one each from Chicago and New Jersey and four from New York, call themselves View Askew, in tribute to View Askew Productions, an American film and television production company founded by Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier in 1994.
Smith is a huge Walter Gretzky fan and has been an enthusiastic supporter of the tournament.
Outrageous attire has become a tradition for the Smith group. Dave Tilly of Orillia waited for the start of his first game on Saturday wearing a tartan skirt, welding goggles and T-shirt that said Funployee, in reference to a term used in Smith’s movie Clerks 2.
It was Tilly’s third year at the tournament.
“The first year I was kind of drafted,” he said. “I had just come to watch but they said, ‘Here’s your jersey and stick. You’re playing.’
“We love Walter and we get a bit of face time with him every year.”
Lee said money raised by the event will go toward research. More than three million Canadians cope with one of five serious respiratory diseases – asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, tuberculosis, and cystic fibrosis.
The local Lung Association has an annual fundraising goal of slightly more than $150,000 for research at nearby health facilities, said Lee.
“I get to raise the money, write the cheque and see the results.”
George Habib, president and CEO of the Ontario Lung Association, said “ball hockey is a wonderful demonstration of the need for healthy lungs.”
He is calling on the government to adopt a “lung health action plan” similar to those in place for cancer, diabetes and heart and stroke.
michelle.ruby@sunmedia.ca
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