All Posts Tagged With: "football"
Good news and bad news for women in varsity sports
Lack of female leaders continues
Photo by kelsey e. on Flickr
Gender equality in Canadian varsity sports is improving, but there are still problems to tackle, shows new research from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Sport Policy Studies.
The good news, according to the report, is that there were almost as many varsity women’s teams (425) as there were varsity men’s teams (431) in 2010-11. The bad news is that there were only 7,815 team roster positions for female athletes—44 per cent of the total—despite the fact they make up 56 per cent of university students.
The truly “disturbing” news, according to the study’s authors, is that women make up less than one-fifth of the senior leadership. Women hold only 19 per cent of head coach jobs and only 17 per cent of athletic directorships.
Continue reading Good news and bad news for women in varsity sports
Guelph football player gets 4.5 years in prison
Convict had bragged he would receive only three months
Photo courtesy of davisonscott15 on Flickr
A former University of Guelph football player was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison Monday.
Kyle Hjelholt, 24, was convicted of aggravated assualt in June after he picked up fellow-student Christopher Fruetel and threw him over a railing in the early hours of Sept. 8, 2009, following a verbal altercation. The three-metre fall left Fruetel with permanent difficulties concentrating, little short term memory and confusion. “I’m not the same person I once was,” he told the court.
Hjelholt, a bleach-blonde strong-man competitor, bragged under a YouTube video earlier this year that he would get maximum three-months for the assault, according to the Guelph Mercury. “Such a lack of insight simply boggles the mind,” Justice Kenneth Langdon said Monday.
Carleton University gets its football team back
Former player rescues team with $2.5-million gift
Football fans in Ottawa will soon have one more team to cheer for. Carleton University will launch a new varsity team in 2013.
It’s all thanks to a philanthropist — entrepreneur and former Carleton Ravens defenceman John Ruddy — who gave the proposed team a $2.5 million boost, matching other fundraising for a total of $5-million in start-up capital.
The Carleton Ravens were axed in 1998 due to financial shortfalls, which came after a poorly played season.
The new team will be controlled by an alumni association called Old Crows Football Inc., which will include community members and the university’s administrators. The university plans to refurbish the old stadium, add new seating, a new press box, a new locker-room and fitness facilities.
Deal nearly reached on Bomber stadium at UManitoba
Agreement with David Asper scrapped because of cost overruns
Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger says Winnipeg’s new football stadium will be open for the 2012 season, and will include safeguards for taxpayer money.
Selinger says a deal is close to being finalized that will see the 33,000-seat stadium built at the University of Manitoba for a price of $190 million. He says $85 million will come in the form of a long-term loan to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers football club — a team that has required taxpayer bailouts in the past.
Selinger says if the Bombers struggle to make their payments, accountants will be brought in to revamp the team’s business plan. Team president Jim Bell says he’s confident the team can afford the debtload, because the new stadium will include luxury boxes and other money-making items.
The stadium was originally supposed to be built for $115 million and be supported largely by property developer David Asper, but that agreement fell apart because of cost overruns.
The Canadian Press
Even university doesn’t earn me cool points
But being older and taller should.
I’ve realized something this summer. My younger brother David is cooler than me. Way cooler.
Actually, it’s not even a matter of David being cooler than me. He’s cool. I’m not.
David’s on his school’s wrestling team. When he throws a football, it travels more than four feet. When he kicks a soccer ball, he can control which direction it goes.
Back in high school, I was in the chess club. And part of Envirothon.
David has dozens of friends on Facebook. I have two. And one of them is David.
David’s coolness has also made me realize something fascinating: certain laws of physics don’t apply to cool people. If I wear a hat for more than 30 seconds, when I take it off, my hair looks like a dead squirrel. When David takes a hat off, it’s like he was never wearing one. His hair instantly springs back to vibrant and shiny life.
I’m the older brother. He’s in grade eight, I’m in university. I’m taller. But none of that seems to matter. His coolness is a direct violation of Sibling Hierarchy Rule #467. Which states that older, taller brothers are automatically cooler. It’s practically my birthright to be cooler than David.
But I’m not.
Last November, I tripped over a wet pile of leaves and broke my arm. When David broke his arm a few weeks ago, it was while playing soccer.
Yeah, even the way he breaks his bones is cooler.
UCalgary football player suspended for steroid use
Team’s head coach says positive drug test is a “slap in the face”
A University of Calgary Dinos football player has been suspended from competitive university athletics for two years after testing positive for steroid use.
Last March, linebacker Duncan McLean, 25, tested positive for Oxymetholone metabolites, a prohibited and very toxic anabolic steroid that has serious potential side effects according to the testing agency, the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport.
When informed of the test results in April, the Vernon, B.C. native waived his right to hearing and admitted to breaking the anti-doping rules followed by the Canadian Interuniversity Sport association. McLean’s football career is essentially over at the school, as he as already played for three years.
“The University of Calgary is unequivocally opposed to the use of banned substances by our student-athletes,” said Kevin Boyles, director of athletics for the university in yesterday’s press release.
“We have a zero-tolerance policy both at the UofC and in CIS,” he said. “We are fully supportive of the Canadian Anti-Doping Program and hope that this unfortunate situation sends a strong message throughout the league.”
Calgary Dinos football head coach Blake Nill says he wishes it didn’t take one of his athletes to test positive for an anabolic steroid to reinforce the league’s rules .
“This is the first one in 18 years for me. It’s tough,” Nill told The Canadian Press Wednesday, just hours after McLean was officially suspended.
“Our drug-testing is one of the best there is. Eventually, you’re going to get caught. If you try to take a performance-enhancer, you’re going to get caught. You see it all the time, but it’s unfortunate it happened in my program.”
Nill says he worries about the impact McLean’s suspension will have on the reputation of his school’s football program, although he has already phoned the families of incoming recruits to assure the parents that drug use isn’t a problem in his locker room.
“It’s still a shock when it happens,” Nill said. “Coaching at the university level is like adopting the athletes. It’s like I have 100 sons, I’m the surrogate father to 100 kids … I consider this sort of a slap-in-the-face type thing. I don’t feel responsible for it, but I’m disappointed it happened.”
- with files from The Canadian Press, photo courtesy of D’Arcy Norman
UManitoba set to get new 30,000-seat football stadium
In winter, stadium will have a bubble dome covering the field for soccer and other activities
The Winnipeg Blue Bombers are on their way to a new stadium and private ownership under media mogul David Asper.
Asper, along with representatives of the federal, provincial and municipal governments, announced a deal Thursday to build a 30,000-seat stadium by the summer of 2011 on the University of Manitoba campus in the city’s south end. It will replace the 55-year-old Canad Inns stadium west of downtown.
The deal will see the community-owned club taken over by Asper’s real estate company, Creswin Properties Limited – a move that Asper admits has some fans worried.
“Their concern is that somehow their asset will be violated and I’m not in it do to that,” said Asper, who is also executive vice-president of CanWest Global Communications Corp. “I’m in it to turn it into something bigger and better.
“When I’ve gone back and forth with fans who are critical of that, I’ve said to them ‘Give me a chance, let me prove myself … cause I think you’re going to like what you’re going to see’.”
For the Bombers’ board, which guided the club out of debt over the past decade with help from the Manitoba government, the transition to private ownership is the logical next step. The agreement requires the football club to remain in Winnipeg “in perpetuity” and reverts ownership to a community board in the event of financial failure.
“We as a board are very satisfied that the financial mechanisms are in place to ensure that professional football in Winnipeg … will continue,” said Ken Hildahl, chairman of the Bombers board of directors.
Asper has been pitching proposals for a new stadium since 2007. His first two ideas – a facility on the existing site and one in a crowded area near downtown – were rejected largely because they required most of the funding to come from various governments.
The new agreement is a complex financial arrangement that will see Asper pay “fair market value” for the current stadium site, which lies in the heart of a major shopping area, and use it for retail development. In exchange, Asper will contribute $100 million to the stadium, which will also be used for amateur sports, and gain ownership of the team.
