Sporting Madness

In a few short months, the Waterloo doping scandal has gone from an investigation of one player to a team-wide investigation to league-wide concerns over drug testing. Today saw the first tangible impact on a league-wide scale, though; as Sean Fitz-Gerald of The Canadian Press reports , Waterloo has suspended its football program for the coming year. The coaching staff has been placed on paid administrative leave. I'll get into analysis on this later, and I believe Rob Pettapiece has a post coming at The CIS Blog as well, but for now, let's focus on the facts. As Mark Masters reports , Canadian Centre for Ethics In Sport (the organization that oversees CIS drug testing) president Paul Melia announced that nine anti-doping violations were found after tests of Waterloo's 62 football players. As Masters writes, CIS CEO Marg McGregor called it "the biggest doping situation in CIS history. "The results announced today illustrate that the CIS core value ...

It's been a good couple of weeks for CIS football. After a strong showing by CIS prospects in the CFL draft, including first-overall pick Shomari Williams (who I interviewed before the draft), six CIS players appear in good shape to catch on with NFL teams. The Detroit Lions signed [ Sean Yuille , Pride Of Detroit ] Laurier defensive end Chima Ihekwoaba after their rookie minicamp [ Tom Kowalski , Mlive.com , via Ron Balaskovitz ], and Concordia linebacker Cory Greenwood signed with [ Mark Masters , National Post ] the Kansas City Chiefs today. Waterloo offensive lineman Joel Reinders has signed with Cleveland [ David Naylor , The Globe and Mail , Concordia offensive lineman Kristian Matte has inked a deal with Houston [ Herb Zurkowsky , The Gazette ], Bishop's wide receiver Shawn Gore reached an agreement with Green Bay [ Dave Heller , Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ] and Regina wide receiver Jordan Sisco signed with the Indianapolis Colts [ Ian Hamilton , Regina Le...

I have a post up at The CIS Blog on Canada West's decision to add UBC-Okanagan, reject UNBC and VIU and make UFV and Thompson Rivers University permanent members. Might be worth a read for those interested in CIS issues; it's been a long process to get to this point, and it's still far from over.

There's an interesting piece from Ian Hamilton in the Regina Leader-Post today. Hamilton talks to Regina Rams head coach Frank McCrystal and comes away with a couple of valuable notes. First, he addresses the new Canada West schedule. In the wake of SFU's departure, the conference is down to six teams, which could provide an opportunity to balance the schedule for everyone. That's something McCrystal would like to see. "We put all this time and money and effort into the football program, so let's play more games," he told Hamilton. "We should be playing 10 games. We should be playing everybody twice." This might be worth looking at. Currently, the conference plays eight regular-season games, and that hasn't changed thanks to SFU's departure. At the moment, the Rams get Saskatchewan, Calgary and Manitoba twice each, face UBC on the road and host Alberta. I'm not sure if that's "easily the toughest schedule in the CIS"...

This is a little old, but I didn't get the time to do it before now, and I think it's still interesting. I've talked about the implications of national recruiting in CIS recently, and this fits right into that. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a feature for the Langley Times on my old high school volleyball teammate Gabe deGroot, who led the Guelph Gryphons to the Ontario final (where they lost a five-set thriller to Queen's). deGroot's story is interesting from a couple of perspectives. For one thing, he went from high school volleyball at a small AA school in B.C. (Fraser Valley Christian) to playing for The King's University College in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference to spending the last two years with Guelph. For another, he made the transition to CIS volleyball very smoothly, claiming the OUA libero of the year award in both seasons he played with the Gryphons. That's even more impressive when you consider that he changed positions midway thro...

That has to be one of the most exciting volleyball games I've ever seen. Both teams came out slugging early, but Laval looked to have the upper hand when they won a close third set 25-23 to take a 2-1 lead. Trinity Western refused to quit, though, winning the last two sets to advance to the final. The final set, which ended 20-18 in favour of the Spartans, could have gone either way, but in the end, they did enough to hang on. Steven Marshall had a tremendous night for the Spartans, finishing with 25 kills. He said the whole team took their game to a new level. "It was amazing," he said. "It was the best game we’ve had this season. I think we played as a team, as a whole. We helped each other all game." Trinity Western demonstrated a great deal of depth; Marshall and Rudy Verhoeff (11 kills, 10 blocks) were both huge in the Spartans' comeback, with other players like Marc Howatson (16 kills) and Josh Doornenbal (9 kills) coming up big when call...

Earlier this week, I wrote a long piece about how the increased availability of athletic entrance scholarships and the increased focus on national recruiting has started to help schools outside of Canada West start to catch up in sports traditionally dominated by western teams. Canada West does still have some edges in scholarships, infrastructure and coaches, but I think the gap is beginning to close a bit. However, you wouldn't know it from this weekend's CIS volleyball national championships. As I wrote in a feature for the Queen's Journal back in 2008, men's volleyball has been solidly dominated by Canada West since its inception, with the conference claiming the last 15 straight national titles and 37 of the 43 championships that have been held. That pattern hasn't shown any signs of changing so far; there are four Canada West teams here, making up half the field; No. 2 Alberta, No. 4 Trinity Western, No. 6 Calgary and No. 7 Thompson Rivers. Three of the f...

I was paging through the Dalhousie Tigers' media guide earlier and came across quite an interesting stat. The Tigers have appeared at 31 straight CIS championships. They've won 24 straight Atlantic University Sport championships and 30 of the last 31 (presumably, their other appearance came either when they were hosting or when the AUS wound up with two spots). Current head coach Dan Ota has been there for 11 years and won 11 straight AUS championships; he's also been named AUS coach of the year nine times in that span. Clearly, AUS volleyball is Dalhousie and everyone else. The question, though, is if that dominance is a good thing or a bad thing for the program. On the plus side, that probably gives them first crack at any Maritime recruits who want to stay in the region. Their almost-guaranteed spot at nationals also can be a significant recruiting advantage, allowing them to draw more national recruits than they probably would otherwise; only three players on the cur...

It's quite the day for disciplinary stories. The Ottawa Citizen is reporting that Carleton has suspended their women's soccer team over a hazing incident. The team will not play against U of T and Ryerson this weekend, presumably forfeiting those games, and will not take the field again until the university's ongoing investigation is finished. This could be a big scandal. There may be hazing incidents I'm unaware of, but the last time I can remember an entire team being suspended was in 2005 when McGill forfeited its football season. Queen's Journal sports editors of the time James Bradshaw and Dan Robson ran an excellent piece on the matter, looking at the wider issue of hazing. Of course, that also wound up being the year featuring the Windsor Spitfires' hazing scandal and the fight between Steve Downie and Akim Aliu . The two incidents, coming so close together, turned into a big national story and put a spotlight on hazing in sports. Over time, that s...

A very interesting story came out yesterday that hasn't received a ton of coverage to date. Vancouver radio station CKNW reported that Simon Fraser University's athletic program has been placed on probation by Canada West for the 2009-10 season. Unlike NCAA probation, this move won't affect SFU teams and their quest for regional and national titles. However, it does remove SFU's vote on conference decisions. More importantly, it leaves them in limbo for next season (2010-11), the year before they're scheduled to join the NCAA's Division II (for the 2012 year). Sandy Slavin , the president of Canada West and the director of athletics at the University of Lethbridge, told CKNW the decision was made thanks to SFU's plan to join the NCAA. "We don't believe they have a vested interest in our business any more and they shouldn't be voting," she said. She said they decided to avoid measures that would penalize SFU's teams this year, though. ...

The University of Calgary announced [ Ben Matchett , University of Calgary Sports Information Director] today that they will cut varsity funding [ Neate Sager , The CIS Blog ] to the men's soccer and women's field hockey teams. There's a chance that those teams could still survive if they're able to raise funds through alternative methods, but it doesn't look good for them. Tennis and golf have also been lowered to competitive club status. By contrast, women's soccer will be returned to fully-funded status and women's hockey is applying to return to CIS play after winning the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference. After the changes, Calgary will have eight fully-funded team sports (men’s and women’s basketball, football, men’s and women’s hockey, women’s soccer, and men’s and women’s volleyball) and fully-funded teams in cross country, swimming, track and field and wrestling. This isn't all that surprising, as plenty of American and Canadian schools hav...

Few things during my time at Queen's have depressed me more than finding out yesterday [myself and Emily Davies , Queen's Journal ] that the dream of a new hockey arena on Main Campus was all but dead. Sure, they've been talking about it for a while and there are some financial benefits (although no one I talked to yesterday could confirm if those numbers are still accurate), but for me, the arena was always one of the big selling points of the Queen's Centre. New gyms and student space are great, but the sports experience I probably miss more than anything else here were the Friday night hockey games at Jock Harty I'd go to with my buddies from the dorm floor back in first year. There was great student support, beer gardens and just generally a tremendous atmosphere. I've been to plenty of great Queen's hockey games since, including this past weekend's Carr-Harris Cup , but it's never been quite the same; even though the Memorial Centre is a good...

Continuing in our proud 1-year tradition , and in step with everyone else who uses the meme, here's the Sporting Madness Christmas gifts for the world of sports: Soccer: - To the Vancouver Whitecaps and Bob Lenarduzzi : a nice, gift-wrapped MLS franchise . That could make the entire city happy. I'll have more on their chances soon. - To the Montreal Impact: good luck for their forthcoming CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinal matchup against Mexico's Club Santos Laguna. Montreal's unexpected run has been tremendous to watch, and it would be great to see a Canadian team keep going. - To Toronto FC: Well, they did already get one very nice Christmas present , but we'll send them a quality designated player as well and a playoff berth. This franchise has been great for Canadian soccer and the city of Toronto. They have so much support and so many tickets sold in advance that they really could just go through the motions, so it's refreshing to see them continue th...

I found this [CIS press release] a couple days ago, but it's taken a little while to sort through the maze of regulations involved. Basically, the York Lions men's soccer team, which was top-ranked in the country as of the last coaches poll, forfeited four games through self-disclosure of an ineligible player. The ineligible player is one Andrea Lombardo of Toronto FC fame, which raises questions of why he was allowed to play in the first place. In any case, York had to forfeit four games and York's men's head coach is Carmine Isacco , who has previously been the Toronto FC goalkeeping coach (his York bio page says he still is , but the Toronto FC roster page has Eddie Kehoe listed as goalkeeping coach). Just about every recreational TFC fan knows about Lombardo, so you'd expect that most CIS soccer coaches (who would be likely to follow Canadian soccer, at least generally) would also have caught on. It seems logical that Isacco, who was a TFC staff member last y...

“Once blood is shed in a national quarrel, reason and right are swept aside by the rage of angry men." - David Lloyd George "It's true, I'm a Rageaholic.....I just can't live without Rageahol!" - Homer Simpson [Satirical letter: please don't think this is real!] Dear Mike Giffin , I'm sorry to inform you that the single-game rushing record [myself, "The GBU: Queen's football versus Toronto", Sporting Madness ] you set Saturday [myself, "Football: U of T - Queen's live blog", Sporting Madness ] has been retroactively removed by the CIS bean-counting machine. In our infinite wisdom, we've decided that the initial game stats were wrong, and you actually only earned 212 net yards rushing, instead of 215. Now, we could have informed you earlier, maybe even during the game so that head coach Pat Sheahan could have left you in for another play or two to clinch the record. After all, he did say [myself, "Campus Corn...