Tyler Schwartzentruber and Jonathan Hodge will be hoping to see a strong Northwind next month.
Schwartzentruber and Hodge, both players of the Grand River Gargoyles Australian football team, are to play in the international Transatlantic Cup tournament in Toronto as members of the Canadian national Australian football squad known as Northwind.
For Schwartzentruber, the tournament is a make-up affair of sorts.
“I was selected when we were supposed to go to Australia for the tournament in 2020, and then COVID cancelled it,” he said. “So then I kind of took a bit of a break off the team and now they're having this tournament in Toronto so I got selected to participate again so it's pretty exciting.”
That tournament in 2020 was the International Cup, the sport’s version of a world cup tournament that was played every third year. Due to the pandemic, it hasn’t been played since 2017.
While there are plans to resume International Cup play, this year will see the first international tournament competition in the sport since the pandemic. While the 12-team (six men, six women) Transatlantic Cup is to be held in Toronto Aug. 2 to 11, the Pacific Cup and Asia Cup tournaments are both to be held in November. Eight countries are to be represented in the Pacific Cup in Australia while the exact makeup and site of the Asia Cup have yet to be decided.
Joining Canada in the Transatlantic Cup are teams representing the United States, Colombia, France, Ireland and Great Britain. Depending on their results, teams are to play four or five games in nine days.
“It's an honour obviously,” Hodge said. “It's one of those things you kind of set a goal at the beginning and the goal was I learned that there was a national team, it's a small sport so I was like 'Is there a national team?' I learned that there was and that was kind of like my in-the-head goal so it feels, No. 1, an honour and, No. 2, it was just cool. Cool to achieve a goal and then cool to get to wear a maple leaf on your chest.”
While a trip out of the country would have been a great experience, both are thrilled to be playing on home soil.
“It's pretty awesome,” Schwartzentruber said. “I'll have lots of fans that will be able to come see me and yeah, it's really cool to be able to represent the country of Canada in a sport that I love playing.”
"It feels good. It's a special moment,” Hodge said. “I played in the Parallel Cup last year which took place in Racine and that was the first game I ever played for Canada and it was, yeah, it's a special moment. I recall walking out onto the field in a line with all the guys and it's pretty surreal.
“It's really cool to have one in Toronto and it makes it easier for the Canadian players -- just a hop, skip and a jump (away)."
Both have been members of the Gargoyles in AFL Ontario play the entire time they’ve played the sport – Schwartzentruber for eight years and Hodge for three. The Gargoyles were formed in 2001 as the Guelph Gargoyles, but changed their name to Grand River Gargoyles a decade ago when they also started to attract players from Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo. However, they retained the pitch at Margaret Greene Park in Guelph as their home field.
Both went through the selection process although it was a little different for this tournament.
“They usually have a West Coast camp and then an East Coast camp so that people don't have to travel too much to get to each one,” Schwartzentruber said. “They haven't had like firm tryouts so a lot of it was the coaching staff watching Ontario games and other games elsewhere. And there were trainings in (places) like Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary. So (it was) travelling out there and just getting your name out.”
That Hodge is on a national team in just his third season in the sport seems like a mercurial rise in the sport.
“I have an addictive personality so I kind of just went in full force, pretty much just stopped doing everything else,” he said. “I was climbing before and that's a pretty stark difference to this but I played basketball and rugby in high school so the two with the jumping and the running and the contact kind of play hand in hand and everything I had to pick up was kicking. And I've got a good group around me.”
The Northwind players are to report to Toronto Aug. 31 and then they’ll have three days to come together as a team before stepping on the field for their first game in the tournament. That could be tough to do.
“I've played with a good number of the people just through the training and a lot of them are from Ontario so you play against them pretty often so you kind of learn their tendencies,” Schwartzentruber said. "There's going to be a lot of players I haven't met yet. We're going to spend as much time as we can with each other in Toronto when we first get there just to kind of learn each.”
“Yeah it's tough,” Hodge said. “We started meeting back in January with a huge group of guys. The team didn't get selected until mid-June but a huge group of guys started training locally together in B.C., Alberta, Nova Scotia and Quebec.”
The players also had group chats on Zoom and WhatsApp.
Now the Gargoyles pair just have a couple of weeks to go before the Transatlantic Cup competition.
“It's kind of just keeping the fitness up and trying not to get injured while playing still,” Schwartzentruber said. “So, yeah, just trying to stay healthy and fit."
“Just trying to keep the body healthy and limiting, for me anyways, I'm limiting contact, just trying to avoid injury but also eating right, getting the runs in, getting the training in and being consistent,” Hodge said. “Staying active but you know it's difficult. You go from playing one or two or three games a month to playing four or five games in a week,
a week and a half. The training is pretty intense but it's good fun. They put together a program that you can follow and it's wicked good."
