Local athletes finished the final week at the Canada Summer Games with a silver lining.
Parker Ellis and Adriano Clemente of Burnaby shared a second-place medal with Team B.C., including Mountain United FC teammates Will Barrie, Robbie Hamilton, Michael Mauro, Michael North and Justin Turner-Pearce, following a 2-0 loss to Quebec in the gold-medal final in Sherbrooke, Que. last Saturday.
Lauren Bondi also shared in a silver medal with B.C.'s women's basketball team that was knocked off by Ontario 61-41 in the championship final, also on Saturday. Raquel Tjernagel of New Westminster Secondary also brought home a second-place medal in track and field.
On the soccer pitch, Ellis scored B.C.'s only goal in Group A action in a 1-1 draw with Manitoba. The provincial squad also played to a scoreless draw with the eventual champion from Quebec.
"Quebec was definitely the most difficult team we played. We went into the final knowing what they were about. But they caught us off guard in the second half. It was unlucky," said the 17-year-old Ellis. "The games at Sherbrooke made me aware how much harder everything will get."
B.C. defeated both Nova Scotia and Ontario by the same 1-0 score in the medal round.
In basketball, Bondi scored seven points and added two rebounds to help B.C. to a 76-42 win over Prince Edward Island in the quarter-finals. B.C. avenged an earlier pool loss to Alberta to advance to the final against Ontario with a 56-41 victory.
On the track, Tjernagel, just 15, shared in a silver medal with B.C.'s women's 4x400m relay team, including Simon Fraser University runner Sarah Sawatsky. B.C. finished three seconds back of race winner Alberta in a time of 3:41.86. In the women's 400m, Tjernagel placed sixth overall in a time of 57.28.
Whitney Rowe helped B.C. women's 4x100m relay to a fourthplace finish. The former Burnaby Mountain Secondary student also reached the finals in the 200 and 100m sprints.
St. Thomas More Collegiate's Sebastian Adugalski finished runner-up in the B final of the men's 400m hurdles in a ninth-best overall time of 56.45.
Team B.C. placed third in the overall aggregate behind Ontario and runner-up Quebec, with 47 gold and 122 total medals.
