Sporting Madness

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...

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...

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...