Sporting Madness

One of the growing trends in CIS athletics in recent years has been a shift towards national recruiting. Local and regional recruits used to make up the majority of most university teams, and while they still have an important role to play, we're seeing more and more athletes head across the country for school. One such case is B.C. product Dylan Ainsworth , who I wrote about recently for the South Delta Leader . Ainsworth and his teammate Sam Livingston led the South Delta Sun Devils to the 2008 AA high school championship, and both were sought-after recruits locally. They both elected to head to Ontario after receiving athletic scholarships, though, and will suit up for the Western Mustangs next fall. There have always been some prominent athletes who have gone out of province for school, but they used to be few and far between. These days, these stories are becoming more and more common. There are probably a multitude of reasons behind this shift. We frequently talk about ...

One of the things we often forget about democracy, especially at the level of student politics, is the impact some decisions can have. That was evident at tonight's AMS Annual General Meeting, where around 800 students packed Ban Righ Cafeteria and almost unanimously approved the athletics department's request for a $120 fee increase [myself, Queen's Journal ] over four years. It's easy to see why we often have voter apathy, though; much of the rest of the meeting was consumed with the petty squabbles and meaningless arguments more frequently found in politics, and it's a credit to those who managed to stick it out until the Athletics motion. Still, this one decision was incredibly important and will be remembered as such. Yes, there was a long process of research, polling and discussion leading up to today, but in the end, the future direction of the department all came down to this vote. Without the increase, Queen's sports would have been reduced to a shell...

Next Monday's going to be a very significant moment in the future of Queen's athletics. That's the date of the AMS (Alma Mater Society, the undergraduate student government) general meeting, which takes place in Ban Righ Hall at 8 p.m. All current students have a vote at the meeting. The key motion to be addressed is a $120 increase to the current athletics fee of $131.75, spread out over several years (you can see the details on the Queen's site here , along with some very interesting budgeting data). Steep university budget cuts mean that the athletics department is facing some challenging times financially and may have to drastically alter their programs if they don't get this increase. Anyway, an interesting foreshadowing of what may go down at the AGM occured March 1 at a special AMS Assembly meeting to consider endorsing the fee increase and sending it to the general meeting for further ratification. I got the bare-bones details on the meeting in last week...

At long last, Principal Karen Hitchcock released her recommendations on the Queen's Review of Athletics and Recreation . The initial review was due March 30, 2007; however, it wasn't released until June 27 after Hitchcock spent several months looking over its content. Ultimately, she decided to take until Dec. 31 to accept further input from the Queen's community (many who had already made their views clear to the authors of the review before its release, Drs. Bob Crawford and Janice Deakin). That process wound up stretching out even longer, with Hitchcock stating shortly inside the New Year that it would be issued by the end of January , and then her office issuing a "no comment" after that deadline came and went. It's nice to see at least one part of this review saga finally come to an end. However, it's a bit disappointing to see that this is essentially again putting off the key decision (whether to cut teams or not, and if so, which ones) for ove...