Sporting Madness

It's a sad day for CIS soccer. I have a full story on James' departure and its implications up over at The CIS Blog and The 24th Minute .

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...

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...