No coach? No problem for Rankin Inlet's tiny Tap
By Trisha Estabrooks
for CBC Sports Online

Tapaardjuk Friesen spends most of her spare time at the Maani Uluyuk school in Rankin Inlet, practicing what has quickly become her favourite sport. Better known as Tap, she laughs at how her nickname seems to aptly suit the sound the birdie makes when it's hit.

Tap started playing badminton when she was 14. She picked up the sport when she was in Grade 9 and living in the south. Since then she's moved back to Rankin Inlet and has settled into life in the small Arctic community.

Friesen is considered short for a badminton player, at five foot one. Once she takes to the court, however, what she lacks in height she makes up for in energy.

Tap graduated from high school in Rankin last year, and says someday she'd like to attend college or university. To attain this goal she's now taking upgrading, working to improve her English and math marks.

Watching Tap play badminton is a study in contrasts. While she plays, heavy metal music echoes through the gym. She approaches the serving line. If you were to take the net and the racquet away you'd think she was a ballerina ready to leap into a pirouette. She stands poised and focused.

"I do have other things on my mind, but badminton is a really big part of what I do and who I am,” she says. “I think it's just my interest in the sport that has kept me playing."

Tap says her favourite shot is the drop shot. It's one that's well executed and, if done properly, makes her opponent run to hit the bird.

Like many athletes who have trained in Rankin Inlet she knows playing well will open doors in other parts of the country.

"I think the fact that I'm living up North and not many people get to experience these kinds of things like going down south to play in bigger competitions and stuff like that is a real motivation,” she says.

“I go once a year to see my sisters and my dad but as far as badminton goes I've never been in any competition down there."

Tap says she's both nervous and excited about playing in the Canada Winter Games. She's never played in a competition of this magnitude.

"I'm pretty excited but the people we're going to be playing against are going to be really, really good and it's going to be nothing compared to the Arctic Winter Games."

One thing that will set Tap apart from many of her opponents in New Brunswick will be the fact she doesn't train with a coach. She says she doesn't see it as an obstacle.

"I don't really have a coach, just everybody who comes here to play they tell me what I have to work on,” she says. “It's kind of harder because you don't have anyone there to help you out with what you have to work on, or discipline you
or anything. It's up to you yourself to kind of work on what you need to work on."

Karen McClarty is one of the people Tap has come to rely on in place of a coach.

“She's really confident in her plays, she never beat me until this year, and I don't like to be beaten,” she laughs. “Usually every night I have to play one game of singles with her because she likes to go home with a win and lately she's won just about every time.”

To prepare Tap for the Canada Winter Games she attended a week-long training camp in Saskatoon before traveling to New Brunswick.

Tap says the Canada Winter Games is just one chapter of her badminton career -- a career and a game she says will stay with her wherever she goes.