Sporting Madness

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...

This year in CIS (Canadian Interuniversity Sport) football has seen some crazy games. The Ontario playoffs in particular have been excellent, and the Queen's Golden Gaels emerged as Yates Cup champions with wins over the McMaster Marauders and the Western Mustangs . Today, they knocked off the Laval Rouge et Or 33-30 (see my friend and former Queen's Journal colleague Mike Woods ' CP story here ) to advance to the Vanier Cup , the Canadian university championship. There, they'll take on the University of Calgary Dinos, who demolished the Saint Mary's Huskies 38-14 in the Uteck Bowl earlier today. In the wake of the Queen's game, Canwest News Service's Peter James made an interesting remark that served as the inspiration for this post. Tongue-in-cheek, he tweeted , "BCS supporters can point to the #CIS to show why their system works. Queen's upset prevented at No. 1 vs. No 2 Vanier Cup." That's true, as Laval ranked first and Calga...

(Cell phone pics may not be impressive, but they're all I could get.) Last week, I bemoaned how many of us in the media often transform quarterbacks from a story into the story of a game. Yet, if you were to pick a game where quarterbacks were the story, Saturday’s Yates Cup clash between the Western Mustangs and the Queen’s Golden Gaels would be a pretty good one. With the head-to-head matchup of Michael Faulds and Danny Brannagan , two 10,000 yard passers and the top two guys on the CIS career passing list, many expected a passing shootout, and they were not disappointed. Faulds completed 25 of 38 passes for 509 yards and one touchdown in a losing cause, while Brannagan completed 27 of 47 for 515 yards and five touchdowns in Queen’s 43-39 victory and was named Yates Cup MVP. Both passers threw for over 500 yards, which is an incredible feat. There are only nine 500-yard passing games in the history of the NFL, and perhaps a few more in the CFL; I wasn’t able to find those...

This weekend saw plenty of turmoil in CIS football, with No. 1 Laval, No. 2 Western, No.8 Laurier and co-No.10 Alberta all suffering losses, making the Top 10 perhaps more difficult to analyze than ever. With my natural sense of good timing, I figured it would be the perfect week to start revealing my ballot choices; they'll be easier to mock than ever! I'm a firm believer that there isn't necessarily a right way to rank the Top 10. It's an opinion poll of people who know a lot about the game, which means that the overall rankings are very valuable in my mind. Each individual voter likely approaches their ballot differently, though, and that's a good thing; it would be an extremely boring universe if we all thought alike. Thus, there are probably plenty of good reasons for anyone to disagree with any individual ballot, but that doesn't diminish the validity of the ballot, the thought and effort that went into it or the importance of the overall rankings. I try...