The winners, the losers
An unscientific guide to the best and worst in university sports
Top overall
The University of Western Ontario. Last year, the Mustangs won nine OUA (Ontario University Athletics) championships and both the men’s and the women’s national rowing titles, and made it to the final in both football and men’s hockey, and the semifinal in men’s basketball. “There’s a real sports culture at Western,” says Rob Pettapiece, who writes about the Canadian Interuniversity Sports (CIS) league for the CIS Blog—and plenty of jock alum are willing to support the team, in spite of the purple uniforms.
Honourable mention: The UBC Thunderbirds—whose hockey teams now play out of an Olympic venue—have won back-to-back national titles in women’s volleyball, three of the previous six national championships in women’s basketball and 22 of the past 24 national swimming championships. For the past four years, they have been ranked top 10 in basketball, volleyball, soccer, swimming and field hockey, and every couple of years pick up a national title in either soccer or men’s volleyball. While other schools tend to dominate individual sports, UBC spreads its big sports budget widely. Attendance, however, is consistently pathetic.
Honourable mention: University of Alberta, whose men’s and women’s hockey and volleyball teams tend to dominate the Canada West division. Alberta, a traditional powerhouse, has won national titles in every team sport. It consistently fields a bad football team, though—just a warm-up for the real sports, they say in Edmonton.
Top football
Laval University—no contest. Defending national champions the Rouge et Or have won five Vanier Cups in the last 10 years. Laval boasts 18,000 fans per game at PEPS stadium, which recently underwent a $2-million refit. (Western, by comparison, draws 11,000 to its homecoming games.) The program, overseen by ultra-successful head coach Glen Constantin, is flush with cash, and is treated like a pro franchise. It has invested in full-time assistant coaches, with an investors board made up of Quebec business people, and the team goes to Florida for training camp.
Top men’s hockey
In Canada, university hockey plays second fiddle to junior leagues, but the University of New Brunswick Varsity Reds, who have claimed two of the last three national championships, boast a stellar program. Last season, they beat reigning NCAA champions Boston College, whose lineup featured 11 NHL draft choices. UNB standout Rob Hennigar, the Varsity Reds all-time points leader, made the unlikely step from CIS (Canadian Interuniversity Sport) to the NHL, inking a contract with the New York Islanders in 2008.
Top women’s hockey
Back-to-back CIS national champs, the McGill Martlets—who haven’t lost a game in almost two years, dating back to a 2-1 shootout loss to Alberta on Dec. 30, 2007—are the rising women’s hockey powerhouse. Goaltender Charlie Labonte and defenceman Catherine Ward both play for the women’s national team. Martlets head coach Peter Smith is assistant coach of the Olympic national team (previously head coach of the under-21 women’s national team).
Expect McGill’s dominance to continue. Two years ago, the team received a landmark $1-million donation—the biggest ever to a university women’s sports program in Canada. So it’s flush, and has a strong coach with an eye on the country’s top young talent. Smith’s recruiting job isn’t difficult: the appeal of playing for a winning team while surrounded by everything a McGill education and downtown Montreal has to offer is tough to turn down.
Next: Top basketball teams, best rivalry, worst team name, blind arrogance and more
Where is the Guelph Gryphons cross country running team. The women’s team has won the past four CIS titles and look poised to take home the trophy again this year with their number one ranked team. The men are no different looking to pull in their 10th title in the past 13 years. What a program. Alot of the credit goes to coach Dave Scott-Thomas for his remarkable work woth the athletes. GO GRYPHONS!!!
What about Laurier?
The Wesmen name originates from the name of The University of Winnipeg’s founding college, Wesley College.
Nice to see university sport get a review here.
Western’s teams finished in the Top 5 in their division in 36 of 38 sports last year and in the market-driven men’s hockey, men’s basketball and men’s football made it to the national semifinals (and national finals in men’s hockey and football).
A clarification – RE: Da’shawn Thomas – he signed to the practice roster, not the full roster, and therefore it’s not like a former professional coming to the CIS. There are rules preventing that for a reason… do different than a player attending an NHL camp and – even after spending time with a semi-pro team, for example – coming back to play at the university level after being cut… players lose eligibility based on their forray into semi-pro sports.
I don’t think the Gee-Gees nick name stinks at all. It is much more colorful than mundane names like the Lions,Ravens,Rams and other common animals.
The name has cultural connotations in the Ottawa Valley, where farmer settlers from Ireland called their work horses gee gees going back to the nineteenth century. They borrowed the name from race track slang in the British Isles.There a gee gee is the lead horse in a race, or the first horse out of the gate. Francophone farmers in Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec soon adopted it too. So, the name works in both English and French at Canada’s bilingual university.
Of course GG also stands for the school colours, Garnet and Grey. It is compatible with other Universities that use their colours as nicknames, such as the R&O of Laval and the Vert and Or of Sherbrooke.
The Gee-Gees have been around for more than a hundred years , won many championships, and nobody should mess with a fine old name steeped in tradition.
How about the University of Manitoba Bisons, for improper plurals
I agree, I’m proud to be a Gee-Gee! I love the originality of the name.
GO GEEGEES. I’m disappointed that this review fails to mention that, while the GeeGees do lack a varsity team that dominates it’s sport entirely, many teams at the school rank consistently within the top teams in Ontario (especially club teams like baseball, waterpolo, ultimate frisbee, and rowing). The football team is always in contention for the vanier cup, the women’s soccer team barely loses a game, and ofthe men’s basketball team is a mere step behind the nationally renowned ravens. And those are just a few of the highlights of GeeGees sports teams…
This list of teams was extremely exclusive and barely scratched the surface of Inter-University sports. Perhaps a more comprehensive and fair look at the state of CIS competition would give more accurate insight into the world of Canadian varsity sport programs.
Finally, an issue that I am passionate about. I’ve appeared for data of this caliber for the last a number of hours. Your website is drastically appreciated.