{"id":19034,"date":"2017-11-22T16:08:57","date_gmt":"2017-11-22T21:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=19034"},"modified":"2017-11-22T16:08:57","modified_gmt":"2017-11-22T21:08:57","slug":"winning-athletes-stress-importance-of-teamwork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/winning-athletes-stress-importance-of-teamwork\/","title":{"rendered":"Winning athletes stress importance of teamwork"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Local athletes are stressing the importance of teamwork and leadership in sport, having brought home the hardware at this month\u2019s Athletics Awards at Pickering College.
\nEmma Kerswell and Adam Murphy are two of five Aurora students honoured by the school for their prowess on the court and on the field.
\nKerswell\u2019s role as co-captain of the school\u2019s Senior Girls\u2019 Basketball Team secured her the Coach\u2019s Award.
\n\u201cI have been going to Pickering for 11 years and been playing sports since Grade 4,\u201d explains Emma. \u201cI grew up playing basketball and it comes very naturally to me. I know for some people it can be very difficult to understand some of the plays and some of the skills, so I figured I could help where I tried. As a captain, that is definitely a role you fill in different ways and I think that helped me out in just being a positive person on the team. Also, helping from a \u2018friend\u2019 perspective is very important to me in making the players who are new to the sport feel comfortable.\u201d
\nYou can\u2019t win any game, let alone basketball, without teamwork and helping each other, she says. That can be as simple as passing a ball or cheering from the sidelines.
\n\u201cWhen you go into a sport, you do so with the understanding that you should put your best foot forward and, of course, once in a while you do go above and beyond. Whether you recognize it or not, you are going into that role and really helping whoever you are working with.\u201d
\nThe same sentiments hold true for Grade 11 student Adam Murphy, who shared MVP honours on the Senior Boys Soccer Team with his co-captain Samuel Correa this year.
\n\u201cOur coach said I won MVP for my ability to score goals,\u201d says the modest Murphy, who did not mention that he was personally responsible for five of the six goals his team scored in their championship game at the start of November.
\n\u201cI play soccer outside of school as well and I have never won an MVP award,\u201d he says. \u201cIt meant a lot to me to be a Grade 11 on the Senior Boys team with a lot of Grade 12s to win MVP. It made me feel good. My parents put me in soccer when I was about five years old and when I became older and able to make my own decisions, I kept enjoying it and playing.
\n\u201cMy brother and sister played soccer and I think that was an influence with me too. The major thing I like about soccer is you need all the players on the field to be able to work together. It is not just about watching goals happen. I like every good little play that happens during the game. Nice passes, long passes, I enjoy watching and playing everything.\u201d
\nAlthough he still has another full year to go at Pickering College, Murphy is actively looking for scholarship opportunities for his post-secondary career, eyeing chances as varied as the University of Kentucky, the University of North Carolina, and various paths in Portugal.
\n\u201cPickering College is very inclusive in its approach to athletics,\u201d says Pickering College\u2019s Naomi Cote. \u201cThere is a real emphasis on teambuilding and being good sports and working together. We\u2019re still very competitive on our competitive teams, but I think there is also a real spirit of being team players and encouraging one another to do well. The Athletic Awards really honour that: it goes beyond skills, recognizing the students\u2019 capabilities as good teammates.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Local athletes are stressing the importance of teamwork and leadership in sport, having brought home the hardware at this month\u2019s Athletics Awards at Pickering College<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5,24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news","category-news-sports","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/2017-11-23-09.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4X0","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-10 23:25:37","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}