Notes on our teams of interest in The 613...
HOCKEY
- Gee-Gees: Ottawa will have to get it done on the road over their final four games after a 6-0 thumping of UOIT in their final home game on Sunday. Kingston native Nick Vernelli contributed a couple helpers.
This actually happened: Brunt and Garrioch came to blows. No, not the Globe & Mail's Stephen Brunt and the Ottawa Sun's Bruce Garrioch, but UOIT's Ian Brunt and the U of O's Dylan Garrioch threw down in fisticuffs.
- Gaels: Only an oral poet of Tyler King's stature can do right by the Gaels' 5-4 shootout win over Carleton on Saturday night. Their magic number over Toronto to win the division is 3, and they have Ryerson (now out of the playoffs) and RMC left while the U of T still has two games against powerhouse Lakehead.
Ryan Gibb stopped 64-of-71 shots across the two games. Great point raised by TK is that Ryerson is really taking hockey seriously now, which means Queen's will have to step up their recruiting and budget for hockey. Or they could just eliminate it. - Ravens: A three-point weekend, with two of the points coming against Concordia, was almost as good as Carleton could have expected. They're at UQTR next weekend.
Here's an update on the standings (top six make playoffs).
- Trois-Rivieres: 35, 5 (division leader)
- Queen's: 27, 2 (division leader)
- McGill: 31, 5
- Toronto: 25, 4
- Carleton: 25, 4
- Ottawa: 24, 4
- Concordia: 23, 5
- RMC: 22, 3
There's a full account of the Capital Hoops Classic, which Carleton squeaked out 70-66, at cishoops.ca and the Ottawa papers have recaps today, no doubt. (Plus there's a rundown on how the top teams did over at The CIS Blog.)
Quite a night for the alma mater: Former Ernestown Eagles Aaron Doornekamp (20 points for Carleton) and Donnie Gibson (19) were the game's high scorers, while Stu Turnbull, whose dad coached at the school for many years, was player of the game. (As predicted, he had a big night with 14 points.) In other words, ESS didn't need N.S. around... that was pretty much how it was during my one and only year of senior basketball.
Some of us have friends in town and had to pass on the Capital Hoops Classic, but did get to write about for the Ottawa Sun.
Couple Hometown Breakdown notes: Navan's Travis Mitchell had 20 points to keep Queen's in the hunt on Friday against Carleton; Jacqui Snyder, of Odessa, had 15 points in as many minutes for the women's hoops Ravens in their loss to Queen's on Friday.
Good on the Whig-Standard for noting it's been 10 years since Queen's beat Carleton in men's basketball. You know how long ago that was? That 65-64 win on Jan. 30, 1998 (John Purdy hit the winning layup at the buzzer off an inbounds pass under the basket) was the first basketball game that a writer named Nathan Sager covered for The Queen's Journal.
(That's how you do it! That's how you drop in a link and make it seem organic.)
FOOTBALL
Kingston's own Rob Bagg, who signed with the Saskatchewan Roughriders earlier this week stands to be the fourth Gaels receiver who was were playing football in Kingston in the fall of 2002 who has seen time in the CFL. That fall, Brad Smith (now with the Alouettes), Iain Fleming and Craig Spear (who had brief flings in the league) were with the Gaels, while Bagg was catching passes and returning punts for Frontenac Secondary.
The Gaels running back from that season, Bryan Crawford, is now with the Argos. Here's a vote of confidence that another runner, Mike Giffin, who was at Bayridge Secondary back in '02, will be in the CFL soon.
CFRC's play-by-play man from 2002, Dan Vertlieb, has done them all one better -- he's doing PR at the Super Bowl.
That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.
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4 comments:
Thanks for the mention, Neate! In the interests of clarity, I'm just the assistant sports editor at the Journal, though. Hilarious comment by Parker, but after going to RMC's Constantine Arena last night, I'm much less inclined to bash the Mem Centre: Constantine is probably newer, but it's tiny (filled pretty much to the brim yesterday) and doesn't even have a glassed-in penalty box, which I've never seen in an arena before. There's also only seats on one side of the rink. The Mem Centre may be old and decrepit, but at least it's big, old and decrepit...
Also, the Queen's-Carleton basketball duel on Friday should be interesting... not up there with the Capitol Classic, but the brother rivalry could be fun to watch.
Well, assistant sports editor pretty much is a more important job... especially in 1999-2000 when you-know-who was sports ed.
Constantine is an older, community rink, but it always exuded a certain charm. As a Kingston kid,it was always a treat to play in a different rink than your own, so to get in the car with mom, go across the Causeway and play there was awesome.
The only bad thing about Constantine is the netting around the entire bloody ice surface. Talk about obstructed viewing.
Everything else about it makes sense - the capacity is great because they only fill to that level for games against Queen's anyway, and when they do fill it, it works out very well. The lack of penalty box separation is also the case at the M Centre (though the lack of glass isn't, but it makes those who take penalties keep their heads up I guess), and seats on just one side of the rink is also the case at the Gaels' own Strathcona Paper Centre, as well as at the old Jock Harty and a ton of other arenas as well.
The M Centre is just depressing - its large size only emphasizing the sparse attendance at every game (doubt it's ever gotten above 200 except for McGill) and the lack of support caused by our athletics department's bungling of the arena situation.
To be honest, Neate, though a good budget increase would help the hockey program, step 1 is pretty simple - make the head coach a full time position. I think we're the only program, or at least the only competitive program, that still pays part time. You can't expect the recruiting to be effective when you're expecting the recruiters to balance two jobs - though the quality of recruits this team has gotten over the past 2 years is a testament to the current staff's abiliy to do just that.
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