FORT FRANCES—Steven Krag is a pioneer of sorts.
The year-old Fort Frances native is the first member of the Sunset Country Squash Club to compete in the sport at the university level, taking the courts for the Waterloo Warriors—one of the top teams in Ontario.
Krag’s ascension to the upper ranks of the sport marks a long journey from his humble beginnings as a youngster playing for fun with his parents.
In a town dominated by hockey, Krag soon was introduced to the limited, but dedicated, number of squashers playing at the Memorial Sports Centre—among them Bob and Mary-Beth Tkachuk.
“My parents sort of knew them [the Tkachuks] through squash,” Krag recalled. “Bob and Mary-Beth play so much that it was bound to happen that we were going to cross paths.
“I kind of got involved with Bob and he said, ‘You’ve got some potential,’” Krag added.
“I was still really young and he wanted to coach me and I said, ‘You know what, yeah, let’s do it.’ Basically, he taught me everything I know.
“If I didn’t have him, I don’t know if I’d even still be playing [squash],” admitted Krag.
Tkachuk founded a junior branch of the Sunset Country Squash Club and Krag, along with fellow junior Megan Canfield, began competing. But given the limited number of junior squash players competing in the district, the situation was less than ideal.
“There’s not a lot of juniors here, unfortunately, to play with,” noted Krag. “My buddies, and everybody, were into hockey. That was tough.
“It would have been easier if I’d had a friend to get better with,” he added. “I was playing the same group of people the whole time, but I stuck with it.
“You kind of get addicted with this sport.”
Initially, squash appealed to Krag as a means to stay physically fit. “I’m a pretty active person and it’s a good sport to stay in shape throughout the winter,” he reasoned.
However, as he got older and began showing improvement, Krag’s passion for the sport grew. From the ‘C’ division, he eventually worked his way up to the ‘B’ ranks in tournament play.
“Every year I tried to get a little better and play a little better,” he said.
The highlights of his junior playing days came at the annual La Place Rendez-Vous tournament here in town, and when he twice was afforded the opportunity to represent Northwestern Ontario at the Ontario Winter Games as a member of the under-17 and under-19 squash teams.
After completing his studies at Fort High, Krag applied—and was accepted—to the chemical engineering program at the University of Waterloo.
Initially unimpressed with the prospects of playing for the Warriors, Krag took a hiatus from competitive squash. But it wasn’t long until he found himself back on the courts.
“I didn’t get involved until the beginning of my second year,” he said.
“I knew we had a [squash] team but I didn’t really look into it enough and I didn’t think we were that good of a team,” he noted. “I’d seen some guys play and I could never find anybody to give me a good run.
“Eventually I was talking to somebody and they said, ‘No, our team is good,’ so I went out to a practice and met the coach and the captain and they said, ‘Yeah, come out to a few practices and we’ll see what you’ve got.’”
Krag attended the practices and quickly established himself as one of the top six players on the team—a significant accomplishment given the fact only the top six from each team compete at the Ontario University Athletics level in squash.
“I got plugged right in because I’d had that experience and that skill level going in,” he said.
Both Krag and his Warrior teammates enjoyed a solid season a year ago as they took home the bronze medal—finishing behind only perennial powerhouses the Western Mustangs and University of Toronto Varsity Blues.
This year, the team is hoping to build on its success. “We’re hoping for silver,” Krag said.
“You have to shoot high.” he stressed. “Western’s a great team and, being a realist, we can’t beat them, but we’re going to try and give them a good run.”
At first glance, Krag’s comments may appear defeatist, that is until one considers that the last time the Mustangs failed to win the OUA squash title was during the 1983-84 season—an incredible string of 23-consecutive championships.
The Warriors are off to a solid start to their campaign, having already beaten Brock twice—each time by scores of 6-0—and McMaster (6-0) before losing to Western (5-1).
However, even the loss to the Mustangs was cause for celebration as it marked the first time in several years the Warriors had taken a game from the league juggernauts.
Waterloo next will face the Varsity Blues, Queen’s Golden Gaels, and McGill Redmen in their three remaining regular-season, round-robin matches.
The top four teams in the seven-team OUA league then will advance to the playoffs, where the number-one seed will square off against the number-four seed while second faces third.
One might assume that given the program’s recent success, the Warriors’ squash team would be generating some buzz on the Waterloo campus. Not so, says Krag.
“A lot of people don’t even know about squash at all,” he chuckled. “In talking to my friends, a lot of them think it’s just a fruit.
“It’s kind of bad like that,” he added. “I’m not going to say we don’t get the same respect that the other players get, but it’s a smaller sport and we’re a smaller team.
“It’s not about that. It’s just about having fun, trying to get to practice, and competing a lot,” he stressed.
But while the masses might not be rushing to fill the court-side seats, there is at least one person following the Warriors’ season closely. For Bob Tkachuk, Krag’s success—both on the court and in the classroom—mark the realization of a goal he set out to achieve when he first founded the junior program here.
“My whole wish was for kids to get an education and still play squash as a life sport,” he remarked.
“That was the goal, and Steven’s fulfilling it by balancing an education with sports and his friends in Waterloo,” Tkachuk added.
“He’s doing well and next year he’ll move up on the team, no doubt, and have a higher ranking.”
While Krag is the first Sunset Country Squash Club member to play at the university level, he certainly won’t be the last.
“The next step is probably Steve Boileau,” said Tkachuk. “He’s looking at Waterloo and Western in engineering.
“He could be the next one and hopefully he is. He could be doing the same thing Steven [Krag] is doing,” he added. “There are little ones coming up, too, in the future and their futures are quite bright.
“And there’s some girls coming up who are 10 and 11 years old who are quite bright and hopefully we can get a girl on a university team eventually, too,” Tkachuk concluded.
Krag, meanwhile, also is working towards what promises to be a bright future—a future that includes squash.
“After university, I may stay a couple more years and get my MBA,” he said. “After that, though, depending on where I live, I’m definitely going to try and stay in the squash loop.”
(Fort Frances Times)
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
