Evanka Osmak, "Ali Hoops" (SportsLit S8E09 fan notes)
The Sportsnet Connected anchor discusses her début in children's literature, the "big plans" she has for Ali, a girl with a basketball Jones, and what it means that Toronto is getting a WNBA team.
Encouraging children to put self-expression ahead of a fear of rejection spurred Evanka Osmak, the Canadian sports anchor, to break into children’s lit.
Osmak has “big plans” for a series with Ali Hoops (Plumleaf Press, May 2024; illustrated by Megan Chew). Intended for readers ages 7 to 9, and perhaps those among us who never grew up, it captures the emotions and worries of a 10-year-old girl who is in thrall with basketball, but has the anxiety about tryouts for the school team.
“It’s a tricky time in kids’ lives, especially girls,” Osmak says in a recent episode of SportsLit podcast. You are starting to figure out your likes and your dislikes, and developing more individuality. I just thought that was a good year that kids could empathize with and see themselves in.”
Osmak had the spark to write a children’s book during her maternity leave with her oldest son, who is now 7. In 2020, when she and her husband were bringing their second-born into this world, she set about bringing 10-year-old Ali and her hooping friend Leila to the page. Conservations with friends pointed out that once children enter their second decade, they start to have doubts. That surfeit of self-doubt shows up downstream in higher education, workplaces, and public life.
“For especially girls, there’s a confidence issue and an insecurity if they’re not the best,” Osmak relates. “That’s where it snowballed for me, into this idea of writing about a 10-year-old.”
Osmak, from Oakville, Ont., west of Toronto, has been with Sportsnet since 2007. She and Ken Reid — four-times SportsLit guest Ken Reid! —have anchored the weeknight Sportsnet Connected program together for 13 years, and Osmak also teaches at the College of Sports Media in Toronto.
Here are some notes to complement listening to the episode.
Intro
1:30 That “first thing in the morning on the CBC” scoop from Shireen Ahmed was published on May 10. Elation does not begin to describe knowing Kilmer Sports, led by Larry Tanenbaum, Teresa Resch, and Ivan Gazidis, is bringing the sports scene in Southern Ontario further into the 2020s.
3:30 The quote from Osmak appeared in The Globe & Mail on May 3, “Evanka Osmak engineers her way through grief to write a new story,” by Simon Houpt. The opinions are personal, informed by studying how athletic participation among female-identified children drops faster than boys’ through tween and teen years. Some of why that is will be covered in another book.
5:00 “There is proof surgical patients in hospitals with more women doing surgery and anesthesia have better health outcomes” is sourced from a CBC article.1
Interview
10:15 Toronto Towers as a nom de hoops for the WNBA expansion franchise?
17:00 This advice from Osmak about seeing all the roles available in sports is one I could have used much earlier in life. At age 47, and without on-camera experience, I still have a porch light on for getting a late-night talk show.
20:00 Shoutout to the ghost of Max Jackson (1915-2001), a Kingston sportscaster from 1956-82.
21:30 Further detail about Osmak’s career switch from the engineering field and immersion into broadcast journalism was covered well by Sean Fitz-Gerald, then of The Athletic, in a May 2021 profile.
Fitz-Gerald has also been on the podcast, discussing, Before the Lights Go Out: A Season Inside a Game Worth Saving (McClelland & Stewart, 2019).
The SportsLit catalog contains a few episodes about intensely organized youth sports that probably do active harm to more participants. It must be about social development, since one child in a thousand will become a full-time long-term pro athlete. In youth hockey, though, there is intense kneejerkism to making changes.
Sean’s book included sections on meetings when a youth hockey association in Toronto introduced half-ice hockey for kindergarten-aged children. It increases decision-making prowess, but some parents, including ones with media bullhorns, never stopped flapping their gobs long enough to understand. Thankfully, there are skills coaches such as Dan Arel who do understand.
24:00 Before joining Sportsnet, Osmak was a reporter for KYMA-TV in Yuma, Ariz., and El Centro, Calif.; out of curiosity, I took it upon myself to review the names and colours of Yuma’s high school teams. San Luis Sidewinders is the winner, and it is a complete coincidence they rock forest green and black, the same palette as the Ernestown Eagles.
27:00 Since this is the pod’s second exhumation of the “Ernestown has a statue of a horse instead of a football team” bit of hick lore, I have to share a photo.
32:00 That there is a concrete-canoe competition among civil engineering students was intel courtesy of my sister. The University of Florida won the recent North American event in Utah in June.
37:00 It is about two weeks late for me to have a hot take on Kris Knoblauch charting the course for the Connor McDavid-led Edmonton Oilers coming within two stinking goals of winning the flippin’ 2024 Stanley Cup. As a cazsh NHL follower, it was striking how Knoblaugh seemingly tacked to ‘better to scratch someone a game early than a game late.’ The only rule there is that it has to work, and the athletes must believe it will work.
The Erie Otters connection with Knoblauch, McDavid, and Oilers wing Connor Brown gets a lot of play. That said, Knoblauch’s signature coaching job in pro-format hockey was likely taking the Kootenay Ice to the Western (WHL) league title as a rookie head coach in 2011.
Kootenay, which isn’t even in the ‘Dub’ anymore, finished sixth overall in the regular season and did not have a single top-25 scorer in a 22-team league. In the playoffs, the Ice were 16-3 and needed just one game more than the minimum to roll through three 100-point teams that started on home ice.2
Previously on SportsLit
Please visit sportslit.ca for the back catalog of episodes dating to 2017. The interviewer(s) read(s) every title before speaking to the guest(s). Weird flex, I know.
There have been a few episodes with Sportsnet alumni who wrote books, since (a) people do read books and (b) Canadian telcos have many alumni. One to highlight is that Brendan Dunlop appeared alongside Dwayne De Rosario in 2022 to discuss the Canadian footy great’s memoir. That was Season 6, Episode 13. That convo occurred just before the 2022 World Cup, and now Canada is in the semifinal of the Copa América tournament.
Other Sportsnet-ters who have appeared include Scott Morrison (twice!), Dan Robson (twice!), Doug MacLean, Paul Romanuk, and John Shannon. Former Blue Jays radio play-by-player Jerry Howarth has also been a guest, and so has John Gibbons, former field manager of the ballclub. Full disclosure: I freelanced for Sportsnet’s web portal from 2016 till ’18, but no one remembers that I did.
This is not the first time the pod examined children’s literature. In 2020, Angie Bullaro and Manon Rhéaume discussed Breaking The Ice / Briser La Glace.
Above-mentioned, Ken Reid was the inaugural guest in 2017. His most recent appearance was also in ’20 for a chat about One To Remember: Stories From 39 Members of the NHL’s One-Goal Club.
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind — especially to yourself.
May 18-July 8
Hamilton, Ont.
“More female doctors in the operating room could improve patient outcomes: study,” Amina Zafar, CBC News, May 15, 2024.
That WHL franchise moved to Winnipeg in 2019 and became the Wenatchee Wild in 2023. That relocation to Washington gave the league an 11-11 conference balance.
Add to your list of Sportsnet folks, me (not once!).