CIS Corner: Coolidge crosses canal to coach Carleton

Notes on our athletes and teams of interest from The 613 ... incidentally, it's possible former Duke basketball player Greg Paulus could be the second-most famous student in Syracuse's Newhouse School of Communications, after Kinger.

Ravens: Veteran coach Shelley Coolidge crossing the canal to lead the Carleton women's hockey team after being behind the bench at Ottawa for many seasons. It's a pretty good score for Carleton and if memory serves, Coolidge will be the first woman to be head coach of the team since it moved up to varsity. It could be taken as a sign Carleton is really trying to push women's hockey.

There have been others who coached at both schools, most notably Andy Sparks in basketball, and probably a few in football too.

Golden Gaels: Queen's put out a formal announcement Wednesday (someone was wiped after covering a high school track meet on a humid day) announcing offensive linemen Josh Prinsen (6-foot-7, 290 lbs.) from Bayridge in Kingston and Matt Lapointe (6-foot-4, 270 lbs.) from St. Peter in Ottawa are coming. (This was noted a few months back.)

Meantime, Google alerts turn up the strangest stuff, like an article out of Michigan about a scholar-athlete named Jamie McDevitt-Irvin who plans to skate for the women's hockey Gaels. In the absence of an educated guess about her hockey skill, there was this curious quote:

" 'There's not a lot of difference between Canadian schools and American schools,' McDevitt-Irwin said. 'They speak English, although I did take a French class at Central Michigan just in case.' "

That shouldn't come up too often in Kingston.

Hoops: Two players from the 613 will play for Canada at this summer's FIBA Americas qualifiers. Kellie Ring, a guard for Louis-Riel and the Ottawa Shock club team, is on the cadette team. Jory McDonald, a 6-foot-1 post player from Kingston, was the subject of a great feature in today's Kingston Whig-Standard by Mike Koreen.

The cadet team is bringing in Ryan Evan, a 6-foot-10 (!) post from Earl of March in Kanata, for a final look. They have six players vying for the final two roster spots.

(It's been a while since a Kingston-area lady baller went down to a NCAA Division 1 school. At one point a decade ago, there were three at one time. Major points if you can remember.)