'Olympics for regular people': Good Games come to University of Guelph

Over 500 athletes are competing in The Good Games at the University of Guelph this weekend, an event which organizers call, “the Olympics for regular people.”

All participants are over the age of thirty and playing either beach volleyball, pickelball, basketball, slopitch or taking part in a five or ten km trail run.

This year marks the full-scale launch of the sporting meet following a pandemic pushback.

“We were supposed to launch in 2019-2020 but obviously COVID had other plans,” said Mike Jean, chief marketing officer of The Good Games. “At that time we had athletes coming from all over the world. Japan, Portugal, all across the United States and we launched last year as our first kind of mini event coming out of the lockdowns. This was the first year we were able to actually fully launch properly. We have athletes from as far as Alaska and as far down as Missouri.”

The initial idea for the games was to allow former athletes to continue to compete as they got older.

Helen Stoumbos is the CEO and president of The Good Games. She and Jean began brainstorming about the unique tournament due to their athletic backgrounds.

“Helen Stoumbos is the first Canadian to score a goal in a World Cup for Canada. I’m a former high school and collegiate athlete. You get a little bit older and life happens and then you fall out of sport. You still have that drive and you still have that passion. So we wanted to create something,” said Jean. “It’s nothing super serious. You get to challenge yourself but you get to have a good drink with friends as well.”

What began as a project for former high-level athletes, eventually evolved into an inclusive tournament for everyone to enjoy.

“We want the average Joe to decide to participate in The Good Games,” said Jean. “In all of our sports, we have rec league divisions and then if you see behind me, we have some pro, elite former Olympians, former Team Canada members, former Team Ontario members. So it runs the gamut from beginner/couch, all the way to ex-professional.”

Gold, silver and bronze medals will be awarded within the divisions of each sport but some winners will go home with money.

“Beach volleyball, especially our top-tier divisions, we have cash prizes. For pickelball, we also have a cash prize… We’re trying to expand that to make it cash prizes for everybody eventually.”

Jean added that especially following the last few years, getting people out and active is the most important thing.

“Health is on the decline, sport is on the decline,” he said. “In 2020, we were supposed to launch. We were talking with league that had 70 team, 80 teams. Now, we’re reaching back to those leagues, they have 30 teams. So we want to make sport great again. We want to make people have fun.”

COMMUNITY FESTIVAL

The Good Games also features a free community festival to ensure there’s something for everyone to enjoy while stopping by.

“I have kids,” said Jean. “My kids are teenagers now but if you leave your house with your kids, it’s $100. So we wanted to provide a venue where people could come and if all you had was a picnic blanket and sandwiches, you were entertained all day. We’re able to do that because of our sponsors.”

The festival features food trucks, bouncy castles, lawn games, potato sack races and three-legged races.

Spectators can also attend to enjoy some of the additional entertainment provided such as arm-wrestling competitions or the freestyle soccer championships happening on site.

“I think that kind of created a bit of sauce to the typical tournaments. You can go to a pickelball tournament or a slopitch tournament and it’s sport dedicated. We added the community festival to this and said ‘hey, you can bring your families and they don’t just have to sit there and watch you play pickelball all day long’,” said Jean.

FUTURE PLANS

For the tournament’s first year as a full-scaled event, organizers commended Guelph’s state-of-the-art facility.

“We live in the city and we love the city,” said Jean. “To pull something like this off, we needed pound for pound, the best facilities around. The Guelph University had some of the best facilities in the world so we thought, at least for the first few years, this is a great place to test the theory and get this thing off the ground.”

Looking ahead, Jean concluded by saying that there are many plans in the works to expand The Good Games.

“Right now, this is just an event happening today and over a weekend. We want to celebrate sport for life so we want to be around for a long time and all throughout the year. We want to have many competitions in many different places, in all the provinces. So this is much bigger than just the event today.”