NY Times · Jul 2, 2015
Blooming in a Barren Land
IQALUIT, Nunavut — The boys’ soccer team from Clyde River arrived hours before the most important tournament of the year in the Canadian Arctic. At the airport, the players climbed into taxis and pickup trucks, their luggage piled like rocks on the surrounding tundra.
Seventeen teams were scheduled for the indoor territorial tournament here last weekend in one of the world’s coldest and most remote soccer hotbeds. Nine boys and nine girls would be selected to represent the northern territory of Nunavut in the under-16 division at the Arctic Winter Games in Greenland next March.
“This is their World Cup,” said Gabriel Assis, the chief referee for the Nunavut tournament.