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Sports Oakville Beaver It was an admirable effort, but not the result Diana Matheson and the Canadian women's soccer team was looking for to open the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London. After a solid start that saw the two teams play to a scoreless draw through the first 30-plus minutes, a pair of goals by defending World Cup champion Japan some 10 minutes apart later in the first half proved to be all that was needed as Canada fell by a 2-1 count at City of Coventry Stadium. Canada's next match is scheduled for Saturday against South Africa. Matheson, an Oakville Soccer Club product, played the entire game in her 132nd appearance with the Canadian team. The White Oaks grad, who missed Olympic qualifying due to a knee injury, also competed in the 2008 Games in Beijing. Matheson was the first of several Oakville Olympians to get a taste of action in London. Swimmer Tera Van Beilen (100m and 200m breaststroke) and rower Doug Csima (men's rowing eights) will begin qualifying Saturday. Paddler Adam van Koeverden (kayak singles) will compete in heats Aug. 6, with the final slated for Aug. 8. Triathlete Kyle Jones will compete Aug. 7. SPORTS EDITOR:JONKUIPERIJ Phone 905-845-3824 (ext. 432) Fax 905-337-5571 email sports@oakvillebeaver.com · THURSDAY, JULY 26, 2012 55 Matheson first local Practising in your own back yard Olympian to see action in London CLOSE TO HOME: Jonathan St-Pierre (right), pictured holding off teammate Cedric Gagne-Marcoux, didn't need to travel far for practice Monday. The Oakville resident and his Toronto Argonauts teammates practised on the artificial turf field at Holy Trinity Catholic Secondary School because of poor field conditions at the Argos' usual practice facility, the University of Toronto Mississauga. ERIC RIEHL / OAKVILLE BEAVER/ @HALTON_PHOTOG National flag football championships in town this weekend By Kevin Nagel METROLAND MEDIA GROUP Barry Hutton and Dave Thompson coached a national flag football team nine years ago, a team that went on to win an unofficial world tournament in Toronto. Hutton hopes the duo's coaching acumen works out again when they take two Burlington Minor Football Associationbased flag teams to the national championships in Oakville this weekend. The BMFA is hosting the event at Appleby College, which has the college dorms necessary to house the visiting players and coaches. Two BMFA-dominant teams represented Ontario last year at the nationals in Halifax last year, competing in the fiveplayer tournament despite the fact the BMFA played a sevenman game throughout the season. They just missed the fourth and final playoff spot, settling for fifth. Now in synch with the rest of the country with a fiveplayer set-up, the BMFA can deal with another roadblock to victory, at least at the U-16 level. BMFA U16s are youngest team in tournament "Not only do we not have any 16-year-olds, we don't have any 15-year-olds on the seven-man roster," said Hutton. "We'll have the youngest team in the tournament." Hutton picked the group out of about 17 or 18 who tried out, and the younger athletes won out. The roster includes five Burlington players and two more from Oakville. Ontario will open with a game against Nova Scotia at 10 a.m. Saturday, and play two more that day and two on Sunday. Semifinals and finals will be held on Monday. "I'm not going to give up on our team winning it all -- our team is young but we're going in with the mindset that that's what our goal is," said Hutton, who still manages to play the touch game at age 65, more than 40 years after he started. Quarterbacking the team will be Jonathan Minson, 14, who led his flag team to the championship in BMFA play this season. "We're looking for a lot of good things from Jonathan, including leadership," said Hutton. Ben Cadman is the other QB. He won the Tier 2 title in BMFA and according to Hutton just kept getting better and better throughout the season. The rest of the team will handle most of the two-way play of receiver/defensive back. That includes Tyler Parnham, Minson's teammate, who has size and speed; Christian Vonkaitz, a very fast, hard-working player with a bright future; and Justin Morgan, the team's No. 1 rusher on defence whose speed and size complements an excellent atti- tude (all opinions of their coach). The two Oakville players on the team are Michael Franco -- who Hutton invited to tryouts after watching him be named MVP in a camp at the Olympia Sports Club in Huntsville ("the hardest worker you'll ever see") -- and Quintin McLeary, who was targeted after Hutton watched him dominate an elementary school tournament in Kilbride. "He showed he could play at a very high level at tryouts -- a great two-way player," added Hutton. Only four teams in U18 boys' division Ontario's U-18 team also has the benefit of a year's practice with the five-man game, which coach Thompson believes will lead to a much higher finish. Thompson doesn't have to worry about making the playoffs since there are only four provinces competing, down three from last year, competing at the U-18 level. The number disappoint Thompson. "We have representatives from Quebec and B.C on the girls' side," he said. "I don't know what happened to the boys." Ontario, featuring five Burlington players and two from Oakville, will play a double round-robin schedule, facing Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia on both Saturday See Flag, page 63