ETOBICOKE’S OWN IS #1 IN CANADA!!!
Malik Metivier who specializes in the grueling 400 meter hurdles will be running in the NCAA National Championship Meet in Eugene Oregon representing Auburn University (Alabama) this month.
Malik started his track career in elementary school running at Our Lady of Peace. He also played rep basketball for the Etobicoke Thunder and rep soccer for Etobicoke Energy. Malik started to focus on track at Father Redmond in grade 10. He later went on to train with the Etobicoke Track and Field Club under Godfrey James. Malik finished 6th in the 400m hurdles at OFSAA in grade 11 and was injured for the season in grade 12.
Due to the injury in his grade 12 season, he only received one NCAA Division 1 scholarship offer from Drake University, which he accepted. By his second year at Drake, Malik had qualified for the NCAA West Regionals and had broken the school record. But the end of the 2018 season was bitter sweet. He went on to win his first Ontario Championship, his first Canadian Championship and qualify for his first National team but also realized that because of the coaching changes at Drake, he would need to transfer schools. Malik decided to transfer to Auburn University in Alabama.
The transfer came with challenges. Another injury and the decision to stay in Alabama to train alone during the pandemic was difficult. But it became obvious that it was the right choice because in his senior year at Auburn he won a bronze medal at the SEC Conference Championships. He then went on to compete at the NCAA Championships in Eugene, Oregon.
In Oregon, he ran a personal best time of 49.26, earning the title of “All-American” by finishing 5th overall.
Currently, Malik Metivier is ranked #1 in Canada in the 400m hurdles and 7th in the NCAA which is an amazing feat given the injuries that he has had to endure.
With all of his accomplishments on the track, Malik’s proudest moment came in May when he graduated from Auburn University, Magna Cum Laude with a degree from the College of Liberal Arts (Communications).
“Congratulations Malik!! Your perseverance, dedication and commitment has not only paid off but it has set a high standard for other elite athletes trying to pursue their athletic dreams and careers. Something tells me that you’re not done yet” says Joanne Noble, President and Chair of the Board of the Etobicoke Sports Hall of Fame.
The Athlete of the Month is sponsored by The Etobicoke Sports Hall of Fame, Humber College, Canadian Tire-The Queensway, and The Etobicoke Guardian. To nominate an athlete, please visit www.etobicokesports.ca
Promoting, Supporting and Developing Sport in Etobicoke
“Congratulations to Joey. He had an unbelievable season, posting numbers in many statistical categories that are crazy good! He played in all 162 games with an on base percentage of .454. He had at least a single hit in 20 consecutive games to mention a few.
We are very proud of Joey and his amazing accomplishments. Joey’s opening remarks in his 2014 induction speech were “Etobicoke is home.” And we are very honoured that he is a member of our Hall of Fame” says Joanne Noble, President & Chair of the Board.
TSN telephone interview with Joey Votto (Dec. 12, 2017)
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Perhaps the best playoff goaltender in hockey history, Turk Broda was as free spirited off the ice as he was fiercely competitive on it. Called “the Fabulous Fat Man” due to his impressive girth and his prowess between the pipes, Broda backstopped the famed Toronto Maple Leafs teams of the 1940s, winning five Stanley Cups in 12 years and setting the standard to which every subsequent Leafs goalie would aspire.
Fresh off the first of his two Vezina Awards as the league’s top goaltender, Broda’s legend was born during the 1942 Stanley Cup final, when Toronto found itself down three games to none against Detroit. Backed by their stopper’s brilliant play, the Leafs stole Game 4 and then rolled over the Red Wings 9–3 in Game 5. Frustrated Detroit fans pelted Broda with fruit and peanuts in Game 6, but Turk was outstanding, shutting out the Red Wings and then allowing just one goal in Game 7 as the Leafs completed the unprecedented comeback.
Broda spent the next two seasons in the army but returned to lead Toronto to four more championships, including a run of three straight titles from 1947 to 1949 and a nail-biting 1951 final that saw him turn away Rocket Richard’s Canadiens, with every game decided in overtime. Broda’s sparkling playoff resume includes 60 wins, 13 shutouts and a miniscule 1.98 goals-against average in 101 games. He once said that the lure of bonus money outweighed any pressure he felt on the ice—or as Toronto Star humorist Gary Lautens once quipped, “When the playoff bucks were on the line, the Turk could catch lint in a hurricane.”
Like Johnny Bower after him, Broda wore No. 1, a fitting choice for a man with a knack for finding the spotlight. His most publicized off-ice battle was with Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe—and a weigh scale. Smythe had first happened upon the portly Manitoban in 1936 while the Leafs boss was at a Detroit Olympics International League game scouting a different goaltender. But Broda’s tenacious play caught Smythe’s eye, and he paid the Red Wings $8,000 to transfer the promising young goalie to Toronto. That transaction proved to be a lucky break for Broda and the Leafs, for whom the future star spent his entire 15-year career.
Smythe had no qualms with Broda’s play—“Broda,” he once said, “could tend goal in a tornado and never blink an eye”—but his rotund goalie’s prodigious skill with a knife and fork caused the owner no end of consternation and sparked a short-lived but highly publicized confrontation that became known as “the Battle of the Bulge.”
After missing just one game while he slimmed down to Smythe’s weight target, a jovial Broda called the stunt “a million laughs.”
By the 1951–52 season Broda—then the oldest player in the league—was in the twilight of his long career. In a rare move, Smythe held an appreciation day for a current player, and players and executives from across the league—plus scores of fans—packed Maple Leaf Gardens on December 22, 1951 to celebrate the beloved netminder.
After retiring in 1952, Broda turned to coaching, leading the Toronto Marlboros to back-to-back Memorial Cup championships. The six-time NHL all-star was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1967 and died seven years later at age 58. Still the all-time leader in regular season and playoff wins, shutouts and games played by a Maple Leafs goalie, Turk Broda’s legend looms large in hockey history to this day.
Over the course of his 50-year career, Annis Stukus was a standout quarterback, a brilliant marketer, the founder of two professional football teams and the general manager who lured NHL superstar Bobby Hull to the World Hockey Association. And that is only a snapshot of a gregarious sports lifer who also worked for basketball and soccer clubs and lent his outsized personality to the airwaves and newspaper pages.
Football fans of a certain vintage will remember “Stuke” as the eldest of the Stukus brothers, who formed a fearsome presence on the backfield for the Grey Cup winning Toronto Argonauts teams of 1937–38. With help from brothers Bill and Frank, Annis was named an all-star in 1938, the year he led the lead in scoring.
Stukus honed his promotional abilities at an early age. While an Argo he had a day job reporting for the Toronto Star, an arrangement that sometimes saw him play in a game and then write about it in the sports section.
After his seven-year CFL career was cut short when the league suspended operations at the outbreak of the Second World War, Stukus became a player-coach with the Toronto Indians and Balmy Beach of the Ontario Rugby Football League, as well as the HMCS York Bulldogs, a navy team he played with while in the service.
Back from the war, Stukus consulted for the Toronto Huskies basketball team during its lone season. In 1949, with his pro playing days behind him, he went west to make his mark on two future CFL clubs as an executive. He first took on coaching and GM duties for the Edmonton Eskimos, overseeing that club’s return to the Western Interprovincial Football Union. “Stuke” recruited top players and added some flair to the proceedings when he came out of retirement to handle the Eskie’s place kicking.
Having resurrected football in Edmonton, Stukus next headed for the coast. He was coach, GM and promotions director for the B.C. Lions from 1953 until 1955, and his energy and drive laid the foundation for the club’s future success. His efforts to revive the sport in Western Canada earned Stukus a spot in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame as a builder. The CFL’s coach of the year award is named in his honour. The versatile executive ran the Western Hockey League Vancouver Canucks before moving to the Winnipeg Jets, which offered Hull a then-unthinkable million-dollar contract to jump to the WHA. Stukus’ flashiest gamble yet stunned the sporting world and gave the nascent league instant credibility. For a man called “the loquacious Lithuanian,” commentary was a natural fit.
Stukus wrote for the Vancouver Sun and worked the sports desk at CFUN Radio in Vancouver among other broadcasting jobs. Newspaperman Peter Worthington called his one-time Toronto Telegram colleague “arguably the most colourful sports personality in the country…with a gift for making headlines wherever he went.” The Toronto native and Canadian Sports Hall of Famer died in 2006 at age 91 at his home in Canmore, Alberta.
In a tribute, veteran sports journalist George Gross quoted a colleague who described Stukus as a fun-loving storyteller: “He loved to tell stories about the good old days of playing and coaching and he loved to have a group around him. He would go out at a drop of a hat to any function that asked him, whether it was two people or 200 people. He would soon have them laughing.”