The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

pjjwgedi aiarch 21 l57 markham unionville rep merger by frank king sports editor its been talked about for years but could soon become a reality one representative hockey organization for both markham and unionville the first official merger meeting between markham and unionviues associations to create one aaarated system occured wednesday night at the centennial cen tre arena the discussions have been quite good and we feel very positive toward an amalgamation said mar- khams ontario minor hockey association omha director phil obrien obrien markham minor hockey association mmha president bob mcnair unionville minor hock ey association president jim turner and unionvilles omha codirector earle baker were at the meeting were looking at the advantages and disadvantages for the kids said turner it looks like this would be good but he sounded a note of caution pointing out you have to look at whether the omha would go for this and it hasnt made too many intelligent decisions so far currently markham has 232 boys on 10 doublea teams and four singlea clubs in unionville there are about 165 players with eight singlea squads and two doublea units obrien said their places would be relatively secure since doublea and singlea clubs would continue to exist in the merger proposal there are many other challenges to deal with such as the name of the proposed new organization and how it would be run but obrien declined to discuss those points until the outcome of negotiations is known which should be next month weekender 2942200 6402100 silver medalists markham skating club members janice fisher left and susan gra ham came home from last weekends central ontario section inter- club competition with silver medals fisher was second in junior ladies while graham was runnerup in intermediate ladies debbie graham was fourth in prenovice competitive ladies tracy green mark donna debicki andrea temple and sandra twiner also par ticipated sjoerd witteveen stouffville boys in rep finals the stouffville beckers midget clippers advanced to the ontario minor hockey association omha bb finals with a 63 win in midland wednesday night stouffville took the best of five semifinal series 31 and now await the winner of the beamsvil- lebelle river series sean mcquigge led the clippers with two goals while singles came from paul sinclair jason borthwick and kent smythe the other goal scorers name was not available this squad is the first stouffvil le midget team in a number of years to reach the ontario finals last season the bantam clip pers won the omha bb cham pionship and many of the players graduated to the midgets for this season said manager maurice hamilton beamsville and stouffville played for the bantam title last year so the two teams are famil iar to each other i know a bit about beamsvil le hamilton said im sure some their bantams last year are now midgets too while the clippers know a bit about beamsville theyre in the dark on belle river however hamilton said they had no real preference as to who they play a series against beamsville would mean a lot less travel though belle river is located a few miles east of windsor while beamsville is between hamilton and st catharines skier looks to revitalize racin this years alpine ski season isnt quite over yet but mar- khams henry shannon is already working on next winter the 20yearold markham dis trict high school graduate is trying to get the money to fund a firstclass racing program at ux- bridges dagmar ski resort shannon whos been skiing for 16 years took over from evange line merkley as ski school direc tor in november now hes trying to buck a canadawide weakness in grassroots racing theres a desperate need to develop young racers properly while still maintaining the high way resident pointed out its a lack of development money and coaching for skiers my goal at dagmar is to improve correct this shannon has assembled a whop ping 10000 budget plan to do just that it includes almost 3000 for timing equipment and nearly 4000 for racing paraphenalia the remaining 3600 is slated for race entry fees uniforms and in cidental costs now all he has to do is come up with all the money and a large local corporate sponsor could be the answer ill take anything shannon pointed out what i want to do is iqvci of fun the thatchers mill- make the racing program sepa- rate onto itself so nobody else is using our equipment he believes the basics of ski racing have to be taught effec tively at this level or else youll never have a surplus of talent the skills have to be instilled at a young age by young shannon means six to 13yearolds they would be in volved in the nancy green prog ram while older skiers up to 19 represent dagmar on the her- shey intcrclub racing circuit at the moment shannon a bachelor of arts student at the university of western ontario has 45 students in his program 30 percent of them from the mar kham area hed like to increase that num ber to 70 by next year but admit ted that is a lofty goal this project looks like a lot on paper but once you get it into mo tion its okay and im ambitious optimistic since taking over the ski school shannon who helped start the mdhs alpine team as a grade 10 student has been balancing uni versity with his dagmar duties on weekends im very happy doing this parttime but id definitely be in terested in a fulltime job work ing in the ski industry is almost a mustfor me henry shannon skier looking for 10000