- Ottawa native Kadie Riverin is going to the Canadian women's basketball team training camp next month in Barrie. The Rice University did well with the U21 team last summer and she's long enough (at 5-foot-9) to play either guard spot, so that should help her cause. (Yours truly wrote a feature on her for the dead-tree medium a while back.)
OK, so Riverin didn't play in the CIS, but this is another reminder that The CIS Blog is always looking for contributors. You wouldn't want your humble servant to be accused of being Ontario-centric, not to mention any number of damning -isms. - Queen's women's basketball coach Dave Wilson's Canada Basketball assignment for the summer is with the junior women's national team ... the hoops Gaels also announced that a Kingston native, 5-foot-10 Richelle Gaudet, is committed for next season.
- Volleyball is more Bucholtz's bag, so he'll be pleased to know that the Golden Gaels' recruiting class includes Ottawa native Alex Oneid, who was a main cog in the Glebe Gryphons juggernaut that won the OFSAA quad-A championship last November. The capital should be a Queen's pipeline, at least until the U of Ottawa has its men's varsity program up and running in a couple years' time (thanks for the tip).
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Neate--Ottawa does have a men's volleyball team at the club or competitive level. It plays in local leagues as well as exhibition games against CIS opponents. They have played Queen's.
The current plan is to raise it to Varsity (CIS) status in two years time.
ottawafan
Thanks for the FYI, ottawafan, I wasn't aware ...
Ottawafan is quite right that the Gee-Gees should hopefully crack the league soon, but you're right that Ottawa's a pipeline to Queen's at the moment. Oneid and Anthony Pitfield, his teammate from the Ottawa Maverick Mustangs club side (who won 17U silver medals at the national championships back in early May), are both coming to Queen's next year. Funnily enough, Oneid is primarily a libero, and the guy he'll be backing up at that position is also from Ottawa (Stu Hamilton). The Gaels have had plenty of other good Ottawa players over the years too, including Chris Vandyk (who just graduated) and Adam Simac, who was just named to the senior national team. Thus, there's a definite upside for Queen's of Ottawa and Carleton lacking varsity programs at the moment!
Oh, and just for Bucholtz .... Riverin has a teammate from Rice who's also going to the senior women's national team camp ... Tara Watts from, wait for it, Surrey, B.C.
A quick check told me that the Gee Gees coach is Vincent Pichette. He played for the Laval R&O,and competed in Beach Volleyball as well. He was , maybe still is, an assistant technical director for Volleyball Canada. He was an assistant coach with Canada's Para Olympic team for the 2000 games. He also coaches the CEGEP de L'Outaouais Griffons, a nice recruiting ground for the soon to be Varsity Gee Gees.
Hey... bringing in kids from "across the river" has served many a Gee-Gees varsity program well through the years.
Ignorant question from the unilingual guy from Lennox & Addington County... volleyball seems to much more popular with francophones than basketball, which draws from the same pool of athletes... is this accurate or is it me being ignorant? Where's Bucholtz with the answers?
Sorry, hadn't checked in on this one for a while. Always good to see more athletes from Surrey:). Re: francophones and volleyball, it does seem to be a pretty popular sport among French speakers. 8 of the 18 guys on the senior men's national team last year were francophones from Quebec, and several more were fully bilingual. This year, the percentage is a bit lower (5 of 21 athletes on the senior men's team are from Quebec), but still pretty high overall when you consider that it's only one province out of ten. For comparison, four out of the 22 guys invited to the men's senior national basketball camp are from Quebec, and they're all from Montreal, so they may not even be primarily French-speaking. Thus, it seems that your perception is probably correct.
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