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SASKATOONEXPRESS - January 11-17, 2016 - Page 1
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Volume 14, Issue 1, Week of January 11, 2015
Saskatoonʼs REAL Community Newspaper
An Indspiring story
Christian Kowalchuk sets example for young athletes Christian Kowalchuk started playing baseball 17 years ago at Kilburn Park (Photo by Sandy Hutchinson) Cam Hutchinson Saskatoon Express s each spring would roll around, Christian Kowalchuk would hear the buzz at school from the kids anxious to play baseball. “He’d come home and say, ‘Dad, can I play baseball?’” Christian’s father, Wayne, said. For a number of years, the answer was the same. “I said, ‘Christian I’d really like you to, but you have commitments with your tae kwon do and your music lessons and there’s school. And there just isn’t enough time. So I said, ‘Let’s stick with what we are doing and next year we will see what happens.’” The next spring would come around and the same conversation would be held in the Kowalchuk household. Christian clearly wasn’t going to give up, so his father made him a deal. “What I said to him was, ‘Christian, when you get your second-degree black belt, then you have a very good understanding of what tae kwon do is all about . . . I said when you get your second-degree black belt I will let you play baseball.’
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“When he was nine he tested for his second-degree black belt. He passed that and the next year, when he was 10 years old, he said, ‘OK, Dad, I kept my promise, can I play baseball now?’” Once he signed up in the Saskatoon Braves zone, Kowalchuk played and played and played baseball. His commitment to the sport was much like the one he made to tae kwon do. He was a world certified black belt when he was six, making him the youngest in North America with the distinction. For his work in sports and education, Kowalchuk will receive an Indspire Award, presented to a select group in Canada who inspire indigenous achievement. Among the other recipients this year is Carey Price of the Montreal Canadiens. The awards will be presented at a gala in Vancouver in February. It will be broadcast on Global TV and the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN). “I am thankful for it; it means a lot to me,” Christian Kowalchuk said. “One of my goals would be to really influence someone who is 10 years old and not sure what they want to do.”
He said he would suggest they find something they are passionate about and go for it. Sports did it for him. “You never know where they are going to lead you. That is the biggest thing about this award. Hopefully it influences younger kids to chase something. There were lots of days when I didn’t know if I would play college baseball. I was cut from Triple A (youth) teams for three years (in Saskatoon). “It didn’t really bother me, but I kept playing because I loved to play. You can’t worry about things you can’t control; just worry about what you can control. You can control working hard, showing up every day, you can control your attitude. That is the type of stuff I would want to influence people on.” Whenever Kowalchuk got the opportunity to play baseball he was all in. At 16, he would board a bus on Friday after school and travel to Edmonton. He would make the return trip Sunday night. In between those bus trips he played baseball, and lots of it. He did that for five weekends. Despite being younger than the other players, he made a team that would barnstorm the U.S., playing games against
junior college teams. The goal of the trip was to showcase young baseball players in the hope they would get scholarships. Kowalchuk turned some heads. “I got to pitch against junior colleges down there and that’s when I realized I can do this. When I was down there, I didn’t get hit all over the park or anything like that. I held my own so that was a good sign.” It was around Christmas of the next year when the phone rang at the Kowalchuk home. The head coach from Seward County Community College in Liberal, Kansas, was on the line, and offered Christian a full scholarship. Seward is a Division 1 junior college, a stepping stone to bigger colleges and maybe even the big leagues. “I had a really good freshman year,” he said recently from Fayetteville, Ark. “I literally used everything I could to my advantage – I worked out extra hard, I ran, I ate as much as I could to put on some weight because I was pretty skinny. Basically I hit the weight room really hard that off-season. (Continued on page 5)