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Newsletter By Dan Plouffe, Adam Beauchemin, Jackson Starr & Kaitlyn LeBoutillier
The Canadian women’s goalball team‘s last game of the 2024 Paralympics started and finished with signature blocks by Ottawa’s Whitney Bogart, as the defensive heart of Team Canada went out with a win in the final match of her career this morning in Paris.
The 38-year-old finished with a game-high 41 blocks as she and Team Canada celebrated a 1-0 shutout victory over Japan to claim fifth place in her fourth and final Paralympic appearance.
“I don’t think it’s quite hit me yet,” Bogart said in a phone interview with Ottawa Sports Pages reporter Dan Plouffe. “We keep joking about it today, like I’m retired now, I’m done, but I think it’ll hit me more when I get home, when I’m not getting up to go to the gym every day, when I’m not having my weekends full of goalball and stuff.
“Right now I’m still in Paralympics mode, but yeah, I’m gonna have a lot of mixed emotions about it. For sure, I am ready to move on. I’m excited to have the time with my family and my kids and my husband, but it’s been such a big part of my life that I know it’s going to hit me later.”
Bogart will fly home Sunday of the final day of the Paris 2024 Games, and then she’ll take Monday as a day to rest before her kids go back to school on Tuesday. Bogart loved having her family in the stands like she did at her first Games at London 2012, but with two younger additions this time.
“It’s really cool to wrap up my career like that,” highlighted the mother of two who decided after the Tokyo Paralympics that Paris would be her last. “It kind shows where I’ve come. When I started, I had no kids, and now I’m still competing, I’m at the Paralympics, and I have an 11- and a seven-year-old, and they got to see me compete.
“It was awesome, and they loved it. Of course, we lost yesterday, and they’re like, ‘Oh, you lost,’ but they don’t care, they just love getting to watch us play, they love watching me and seeing me out there. It was refreshing, just the innocence of kids.”
Following a 1-1-1 preliminary round to finish second in their group, the Canadians lost their shot at a medal in yesterday’s quarter-finals when they were bowled over by Israeli star Lihi Ben David, who scored four goals in a 5-1 win over Canada and another one today in her team’s semi-final upset over China.
Canadian coach Trent Farebrother’s final pre-game message before today’s match – especially to Bogart, he underlined – was to just have fun out there.
Bogart answered Japan’s first shot with a dynamic shins block, lined up at her usual centre position.
Maryam Salehizadeh and Meghan Mahon flanked her for the first half in place of Canada’s two other regular starters, but the Ottawa trio of Bogart, Amy Burk and Emma Reinke finished the game together following halftime substitutions.
After a scoreless first half, Canada received a penalty throw with 9:11 remaining due to a Japanese high ball throw. Burk couldn’t convert the shot against a single defender, just catching a little too much of the goalpost with her near-perfect throw.
Burk narrowly missed again a couple minutes later with a crossing shot that deflected off Japan’s top defender but didn’t have quite enough juice to make it past the second. But the team captain at last got her goal less than a minute later with 4:20 left as her powerful bouncer squeezed through the Japanese central defender’s legs.
Japan kept firing, but when Bogart closed the door one last time in the final 10 seconds, she got to ceremonially hold on to the ball as Canada finished the Paralympics with a win and a bunch of big smiles.
Bogart exchanged hugs with her teammates as well as her Japanese pre-Games training partners as Bryan Adams’ Summer of ’69 played in the stadium to send her off into the sunset.
“Obviously not the results we wanted, but overall, we have a lot to be proud about,” indicated Bogart, who was pleased to see Canada post shutouts in three of five games, and give up no penalty throws for the full tournament.
“That’s obviously a huge accomplishment, and then today was great too,” she added. “We didn’t medal like we’d hoped, but we are finishing on a high note.”
Bogart retires with four Paralympic Games appearances, the fourth of which was the hardest to reach. Canada earned its place in the Paris field, which was reduced to eight teams from 10, with a tingling triumph at the Santiago 2023 Parapan American Games.
“It’s such an awesome accomplishment. Not many people get to say that they get to compete at this level for their country, let alone get to do it four times,” reflected the 2011 International Blind Sport Association world champion and four-time Parapan Am Games medallist.
“It’s so cool, and I’m honoured to be able to represent Canada. I’m so happy with my accomplishments and with what I’ve done with my career. And I’m hoping one day I’ll be able to be at another Paralympics, but coaching.”
Bogart is unsure if the L.A. 2028 Games would be part of her next planned chapter in coaching, but she’s keen to coach junior goalball and help develop young players up the ranks, while still playing the game herself on occasion without a competitive focus.
“This has been an amazing experience,” Bogart said of her final Paralympics as a player. “Like, with a medal, I would have been even happier, but our team is awesome. I’m really proud of our team and I’m hoping that they’re still going to be just moving up from here.”
Ottawa Paralympians in action on September 5:
Day 8 Preview: Keegan Gaunt will take another lap around the track in her Paralympic debut
Keegan Gaunt will get to celebrate being a Paralympian once more tomorrow as the 24-year-old Ottawa Lions Track and Field Club product competes in the T13 women’s 400 metres.
Gaunt, who is the daughter of past Canadian Paralympians Robert Gaunt and Robbi Weldon, said it was a “very special” and “full-circle moment” to have her parents and her grandmother watch her race Monday in the T13 women’s 1,500 m for athletes with visual impairments.
“It was just an awesome experience overall,” Gaunt smiled in a post-race interview shared by the Canadian Paralympic Committee on Instagram. “Walking out from the call room under the stadium and you could hear the crowd going. That’s when it got really real and exciting.”
The Merivale High School and University of Guelph grad finished ninth in her debut Paralympic event in a time of 4:51.43.
“I had a race plan and followed the race plan,” Gaunt noted. “It wasn’t the time I was hoping for, but I left everything on the track and I’m proud of that.”
The 400 m is not Gaunt’s strongest distance, but with a down-sized number of para athletics events to choose from on the Paralympic programme, it nonetheless offers another chance for her to compete among the world’s best.
Gaunt is seeded 13th of the 14 athletes entered based on her season-best time of 1:02.20. She’ll almost certainly have to dip under the one-minute barrier for the first time in her para athletics career to have a chance at moving on to the eight-athlete final.
Also in action tomorrow will be two athletes from the larger national capital region, Carleton Place’s Anne Fergusson and Pembroke’s Jolan Wong. The members of the Canadian women’s sitting volleyball team will have a chance to secure their place on the podium when they compete in the semi-finals tomorrow at 2 p.m. ET.
The Canadians, who beat Slovenia and Rwanda 3-0 and lost 3-1 to Brazil in the preliminary round, will be taking on China, which has dropped only one set in three victories.
And three-time Paralympian Priscilla Gagné, who splits her time between Ottawa and the national judo training centre in Montreal, will also be competing tomorrow in the 57 kg J1 women’s para judo event, as will University of Ottawa medical school grad Julia Hanes in the F33 women’s shotput para athletics competition.
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