- Ottawa Gee-Gees right wing Nick Vernelli, an Odessa native, is joining Queen's sniper Brady Olsen with the Rapid City Rush of the Central league; his signing was just announced today. Vernelli was a key player for the hockey Gee-Gees the past couple seasons.
(Way back when, Vernelli once played on a high school team that had Trina Sager, official sister of Out of Left Field, as its backup goalie. Speaking of the ol' high school, what does it say when a 31-year-old man actually notices that said ol' high school made the city semi-final in baseball? A hearty huzzah goes to a lad named Brock Cook, who scored the winning run in the final inning and as a pitcher, helped combine on a two-hitter to upset Frontenac, which is about twice the size of Ernestown. - Halifax and Kingston have a lot of similarities, so maybe that explains why RMC is hiring Scott James, a Dalhousie assistant the past five seasons, as its new basketball coach.
The Paladins are 1-65 in the OUA since all-everything forward Kevin Dulude graduated after the 2004-05 season. Wish James well. - Incidentally, on the topic of Kingston and university sports, Tyler King of CFRC Sports has now posted a season's worth of Offsides podcasts, for anyone who's interested to hear what we sound like.
(Cross-posted to The CIS Blog.)
Related:
James takes RMC's head job (Chad Lucas, Halifax Herald)
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5 comments:
Here's a question for you, Neate. Should RMC be in the league?
Apart from the obvious that they can't win a game, they kill Queen's as their travel partner because teams can rest their big guns against the Paladins and have them fresh and rested for a game against a more fatigued Gaels squad.
If you listen to some people, Carleton made that exact point by running up the score against them last season.
That goes right to the heart of what the OUA and CIS is -- competitive endeavour or a student activity? You don't want to sit there and try to deny another school the right to play, but nor should it be excused from having to meet some sort of minimum standard of competitiveness. How would you enforce it, though?
A coach or A.D. can say all the right things about how the team's getting better and it's got some good recruits coming in.
Tyler probably already knew this, but last year, Queen's were 5-4 against teams coming off a Friday vs. RMC and 9-4 vs. everyone else.
Though I'm not sure if it's a result of a) their opponents resting the big guys against RMC (who actually scored more points and allowed fewer in those games than their season average, not the opposite as you'd expect); or b) simply the fact that Queen's was also playing their second game in two days, so they'd be tired too.
On a related topic: Neate (or anyone who's a fan of CIS hockey), would you rather see Nipissing ice the worst team in Canada or no team at all?
An interesting solution to the RMC problem I've heard floated on the volleyball front (where they're equally horrible) would be splitting the OUA into two divisions: schools like Queen's and Mac interested in competing against the powers out West would have their own elite league, and would also potentially get some out-of-province games to tune up further. Schools like RMC could compete in their own league, where they would actually be able to win some games: costs would probably drop for those programs as well (no AFAs, less travel, etc). A similar idea might work in basketball: keep the teams willing to put time and money into their programs at the top tier and create a second-tier league with lower costs for those who'd prefer to spend less on their programs. Another alternative would be for these schools to drop back to playing colleges (which I understand RMC used to do in volleyball). Thoughts?
As per Rob's question, I'd rather see schools ice (or field) no teams instead of perennial doormats. It's okay to be bad if there's real hope of improvement, but my view is that they shouldn't waste everyone's time and travel dollars on programs that aren't going anywhere. As Rob pointed out, it even hurts other schools who are paired with them, and it's not just RMC: on the volleyball side, Western and Windsor have the same problem (Windsor sucks), as do Waterloo and Laurier (Laurier sucks).
@ Rob: It depends on whether it's reasonable to believe Nip U wouldn't be competitive right off the hop.
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