Thank you, Madam Speaker. I would like, today, to talk about two sporting events that took place over the weekend. The first was the magnificent performance of our junior men and women's curling teams. The Kevin Koe team and the Tara Hamer team. They showed a skill in curling that did us all proud. I think, more importantly, they showed tremendous grace under pressure.
I watched the junior men's match, and the shot that Kevin Koe made, the double knockout in the tenth end. When you talk about a pressure shot, he pulled off an unbelievable pressure shot. They actually won the eleventh end with another pressure shot. One of those ironies of sports is that sometimes things don't happen the way they should happen. These kids had to deal with a tremendous disappointment. They handled it with tremendous grace under pressure, and I think all of us in the Northwest Territories were extremely proud of how these kids handled an unbelievable disappointment because for a second they had it and then it was taken from them.
So I think all the people of Yellowknife and the territories owe a great vote of thanks to both teams and I think they really made people across the country very aware of the sort of place that we have up here and the sort of people we produce in the Northwest Territories.
---Applause
Another sporting event took place on Friday, which I also attended. Our MLAs' hockey team lost a triple-overtime heartbreaker to the media.
We had an opportunity here for a number of Members to be heros. For a while it looked like Donnie Morin, who scored two goals, would be the hero, and his opportunity was taken away with one second left. The media scored to tie the game. In the shootout, Paul Jones scored a brilliant goal. In the media's last effort, they tied it up. Paul lost his opportunity to be a hero. And then the most unlikely prospect to be a hero was Kelvin Ng...
---Laughter ---Applause
...who scored a goal in the second overtime shootout but, again, the media managed to score on their last opportunity, and our team, unfortunately, lost the game eight to seven.
But, as I look around, I want to salute a lot of almost-heros here in our House.
---Laughter
---Applause