Sporting Madness

The Dinos receive their trophy and CIS banner. [Andrew Bucholtz photo; check out my Facebook profile for more low-quality pictures from the tournament, to be posted Monday night.] The Calgary Dinos have come a long way in a week. On March 6, they lost a five-set thriller to the Trinity Western Spartans in the Canada West semifinals. They went on to beat Thompson Rivers in straight sets in the bronze-medal match and entered the nationals this week as the sixth seed. From there, though, things only got better for them; they knocked off the No.3 Dalhousie Tigers in a close five-set match in the quarterfinals, then beat the No.2 Alberta Golden Bears in a five-set semifinal battle and finally got revenge on the Spartans with a four-set victory in the gold-medal match. Trinity Western head coach Ben Josephson said the Spartans didn't play as well as they could have, but the Dinos turned in a stellar effort. "A lot of things weren’t quite working the way we wanted, but any...

This one's for all the marbles. It's an all-Canada West final at the CIS men's volleyball championships here in Kamloops, with the Trinity Western Spartans taking on the Calgary Dinos. Join me in the live blog below! Trinity Western - Calgary (gold medal)

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...

It's the first semifinal of the CIS men's volleyball championships, featuring the fourth-seeded Trinity Western Spartans and the top-ranked Laval Rouge et Or. Catch the webcast at SSN Canada and join the live blog below! Laval - Trinity Western

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...

After top-seeded Laval opened the CIS volleyball championships with a three-set thumping of Trinity Western, we're now set for what should be an entertaining second match. Queen's, who took the Ontario title in an extremely close five-set thriller against Guelph last weekend, enters the nationals as the lone OUA representative. They're seeded fifth. They'll battle the fourth-seeded Trinity Western Spartans, who came up just short in their conference final against the Alberta Golden Bears. Both teams have a lot of young talent, which should make this one thoroughly interesting. The game will be streamed live at SSN Canada ; watch it there and follow along with the live blog here! We'll get underway at 6 Eastern/3 Pacific. Queen's - Trinity Western

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...

Well, I'm back from a crazy weekend of softball: played seven games over two days, and my trademark intensity meant that I left Revelstoke sore all over, with most of the skin removed from elbows and knees from various diving catches and slides, and bruised ribs, broken sunglasses and a black eye from a head-first dive into an outfield fence (I did catch the ball, though, so it was all worth it). The rest of the weekend was okay, but the frequent downpours made camping a bit less enjoyable, and the massive traffic jam we got stuck in on the way home certainly wasn't a great experience. Anyway, I'm back to the grind of the office and back to blogging in my spare time. Original posts should resume late tonight or early tomorrow, but to fill the gap, I figured I'd present another special edition of the Links of the Day with the other sports writing I've been doing (for anyone who cares). Here it is: - A piece on Nikki Wright, a striker for the Vancouver Whitecaps'...

Photo: Mike Amoroso prepares to serve at the OUA finals in Hamilton (Andrew Bucholtz photo). Some interesting news on the volleyball front. After a four-day selection camp that wrapped up Wednesday, Gaels' right-side hitter Joren Zeeman and middle hitter Mike Amoroso were both named to the Canadian Junior National Team . Both were able to crack the Queen's starting lineup as rookies this year and played major roles in the team's OUA silver medals. Zeeman finished fourth in OUA competition in points per game (3.95) and sixth in kills per game (3.30). He also recorded 17 service aces, thirteenth amongst OUA athletes and third on the Gaels behind veterans Jeff DeMeza and Devon Miller, and he earned the Alfie Pierce Trophy as Queen's top male rookie and was named the OUA rookie of the year in men's volleyball. Amoroso led the Gaels' hitters with a 0.430 kill percentage, which was the 13th-best recorded in OUA competition. He had an excellent year, and managed to ea...

Some interesting news coming out of Langley these days. Trinity Western University announced that they've settled with former men's basketball coach Stan Peters. Peters, who was dismissed Dec. 13 after the Spartans got off to a 4-8 start, filed a wrongful dismissal lawsuit against the university last month as Gary Ahuja of the Langley Times reported. His suit claimed that his firing was only the second time a CIS men's basketball coach had ever been let go in the middle of a season. Terms of the settlement weren't released. Peters had gone on a solid run with the Spartans since joining the program in 1999: his team made the Canada West playoffs four out of the last five years, and he won a Canada West bronze medal and the Canada West Coach of the Year award in 2003. He's also an experienced coach, with 21 years of coaching at colleges and universities under his belt. To my knowledge, this year was expected to be a bit of a rebuilding one for the Spartans, so I w...