swea

tThe official magazine

of the ocaa

fall 2010

ROBERT

MALBASIC

GOING FOR THE RECORD WITH OCAA

THE FUTUREOF ALCOHOL IN THE

2 fall 2010

3SWEAT MAGAZINE

4 fall 2010

ROSTEREditor in Chief

JONATHON BRODIE

Executive EditorGURPREET GHAG

Managing EditorsBRANDI DOUCETT

LANCE HOLDFORTH

Online TeamANDREW SUTHERLAND

JASON RAUCHALICIA CONDARCURI

Copy ChiefCATHERINE LABELLE

MALORIE GILBERT

Art DirectorKYLA SERGEJEW

Photo EditorJUSTIN MILLERSON

Research & Fact CheckingJOHNNA RUOCCOAMANDA GRAHAM

TAI DUONG

Section EditorsBRONWYN ROWSELL

RYAN CHARKOWJON HEMBREYTESSIE SANCI

LINDSAY BELFORDMELANIE KERR

Contributing EditorEMMANUEL SAMOGLOU

PublisherCAREY FRENCH

Editorial AdvisorTERRI ARNOTT

OCAA Advisory BoardBLAIR WEBSTER

JOSH BELL-WEBSTERDOUG FOXJIM FLACK

LINDA TURCOTTEJIM BIALEK

www.sweatmag.comsweat@humber.ca

School of Media Studes& Information Technology

Humber Institue of Technology & Advanced Learning

205 Humber College Blvd.Toronto, ON M9W 5L7

mediastudies.humber.ca(416) 675 - 6622 ext. 4518

Welcome readers to another great issue of SWEAT Magazine. It has been an exciting past few months in the OCAA.

The OCAA continues to investigate new sports and opportunities for all of its members. Women’s Rugby was started this year and just finished its first successful season as a trial sport. After next season it will become a fully sanctioned OCAA Varsity sport. We anticipate launching some new varsity sports and possibly the return of some old ones in the next few years.

Two of our member institutions are going to be hosting CCAA National Championships this winter. Durham College will be hosting the Men’s Basketball Nationals and Niagara College will be hosting the Women’s Basketball Nationals from March 17-19, 2011. I know both of these prestigious events will be run in a first class manner by the staff at these colleges and I encourage you all to attend them and watch some of the best basketball players from across Canada take part.

I would like to welcome a new staff member to the OCAA office. Josh Bell-Webster has taken over the role of Marketing and Communications Co-ordinator, replacing Lindsay Bax who has moved on to pursue other opportunities. Lindsay was a valuable member of the OCAA staff and we wish her the best in her future endeavors. Josh joins us after working with the OUA and before that the CFL. Josh has many projects on his plate including developing a new website (www.ocaa.com) with an anticipated launch date of May 2011.

Congratulations to all of our medalists and participants in the fall semester of the varsity and campus recreation season. Once again OCAA student-athletes have performed extremely well at the National Level. Humber won men’s team golf and Durham won women’s team golf gold. Georgian also won team bronze for men’s golf. Humber won bronze in men’s and women’s soccer and Fanshawe won team gold for the men and women and brought home two individual bronze medals at the Cross Country Nationals.

I would like to once again thank the Humber College Journalism students and faculty who produce this amazing publication. Their time and effort is greatly appreciated by all of the student athletes, fans, and college staff members of the OCAA.

Finally and most importantly, I would like to acknowledge three individuals who have recently retired from the OCAA and made huge contributions over the past 30 years. We will all miss Laurie Cahill from Mohawk College, Ron Fearon from Confederation College and Bob Piche from Cambrian College. All three have served in several roles on the OCAA. Their insight, opinions and expertise will be dearly missed. It is people like them who have been invaluable in bringing the OCAA to where it is today. We wish them the best in their retirements and a huge thank you for everything they have done.

Letterfrom the

president...

sweat

4 fall 2010

Jay ShewfeltOCAA President

5SWEAT MAGAZINE

Is there a place for vuvuzelas in the OCAA? contents09YOGA JOCKSAthletes using alternative methods to get ready for game time

12

PROFILE:ROBERT MALBASICSt. Clair athlete goes from Bosnian refugee to OCAA soccer phenom

15DAMAGED DIGITS

Finger injuries can cost you the season

20

WAR ON VUVU’Swww.sweatmag.com

BEHIND THE SCENESWhat you didn’t know about the work that goes into an event

14

A HELPING HANDAthletic therapists make the rounds in helping teams out

18

5 IS THE MAGIC NUMBERStaying in school doesn’t just mean making the grade

33

CLEAN CUPS

What exactly the Waterloo scandal

means for the OCAA and its athletes

23WHERE’S THE BEER

TENT?Why Ontario colleges aren’t selling

alcohol at sporting events

25CHEER TOWN

The gaps between cheerleaders and dance teams are closing in as both perform at

sporting events

30

RETURN OF THE CONDORSConestoga volleyball teams come back after a 16-year hiatus

37

FANCY FACILITYA peek into Algonquin College’s $5 million soccer complex

41

VEGGING OUTUsing a vegan lifestyle to become a better althete

46 PLAY HARD, STUDY HARDERStudent athletes balance school and sports on the road to success

53

DAVID VS. GOLIATHComparing school spirit between small and large colleges

48

FUN FITNESSVideo games to get you off the couch and work up a sweat

49

WHO’S ON FIRST?Humber Hawks suit up for their

inaugural baseball season

44 GOLF LESSONS

A history of the clubs in your golf bag

50THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY AXE-MEN

Toronto’s axe throwing league is coming to a backyard near you56

MMA HITS THE MATS IN ONTARIO

Mixed Martial Arts tries to find a place

in the province28

THE ATHLETE MODELThe Long Term Athlete Development model is gradually being imple-mented in the OCAA

38

sweat

5SWEAT MAGAZINE

PHOTOCONTEST

FANSHAWE’SMilos Janikic gets airborne

photo by anthony chang WINNer

7SWEAT MAGAZINE

FLEMING & TRENT Battle it out

PHOTO BY matt stetson

FLEMING & HUMBERFleming with a flying tackle

PHOTO BY

Runner- up

THIRD PLACE

JES RAYMOND

8 fall 2010

is there a place for vuvuzelas in ocaa sports?

9SWEAT MAGAZINE

In the art of war, the element of surprise can mean the difference between slaughtering the enemy and being slaughtered yourself, espe-cially when you are as out numbered as we were.

Carefully, the five of us tried to press the leaves down, rather than crunching them. We communicated in whispers and hand signals – most of them being the ol’ ‘shhhhhh!’ and a finger to the lips.

Suddenly one of us discharges and a giant shot roars through the leaves and resonates in the tree canopy. Squirrels follow the sound, shooting through leaves and up into what-

ever branches they could find. Our cover was blown; they had surely heard us; the element of surprise was dead.

We all just crouched, looking at each other as if to ask, “What now?”

It was the rookie of the squad who was the first to speak. “Stomp the grass to startle the snake,” he said as he began discharging like a madman.

None of us really understood, but perhaps because of the shock, we all began fol-lowing his lead – stomping through the woods, yelling, screaming, and firing as many shots into the air as possible.

As we ripped through the last wall of trees and saw the enemy, we froze. Some of them were already looking our way. A few of us put our vuvuzelas to the side, while the rest tried to bellow out against the sea of scowling faces at Humber College’s soccer pitch.

According to a recent addition to the Oxford Dictionary, the vuvuzela or /vu¦vә'zєlә/ is a long horn blown by fans at soccer matches in South Africa.

Nowhere does this entry hint at the negative image of the horn. Nowhere does it mention how stars like Cristiano Rinaldo told sports re-porters that they couldn’t concentrate or hear

By GURPREET GHAG

Photo by GURPREET GHAG

is there a place for vuvuzelas in ocaa sports?

vuvuzelawars

10 fall 2010

the referees, or how many English and Euro-pean teams have banned the horns from their stadiums, and nowhere does it mention how fans grew so weary of the sound that television broadcasters began offering audio-filtering for their telecasts.

The negativity has even trickled over to Ontario.At Toronto FC soccer games, the vuvus have

been banned from Bank of Montreal field, even while there is a designated area for musical in-struments.

One of these ‘designated musicians’ is drum-mer Mike Langevin of the ‘red-patch-boys’, and he explains that, vuvuzelas, unlike their band instruments, are seen as nothing but a nuisance.

“There are two kinds of noise that fans create at BMO field,” Langevin says, and the vuvuzela does not create an “attractive” one that sup-ports the home team or is part of the cheer, but tries to annoy the guests.

All that said, it would probably be a given that the horn would be banned from all OCAA ven-ues and that we should not have come to this game.

In fact, section 13, article 20 of the OCAA policies and procedures manual reads:

”The host shall prohibit the use of air horns, loud-speakers (megaphones) and laser point-ers at OCAA events.

The host team shall limit the use of artificial noisemakers including blow horns to confined seating areas.”

But somehow, some way, regardless of all the above, vuvuzelas are actually allowed at OCAA games.

OCAA executive director Blair Webster ex-plains that since vuvuzelas are such a recent phenomenon, they will be allowed in games under the discretion of the host team, and that they do not interfere with any of the play.

“Noise is going to be a part of sporting events,” explained Webster, “but, if [noise] gets to the point of impeding the safety of the event, it’s up to the managers to do something.”

So there we were, face to face with the ene-my, some of us blowing and some of us having second thoughts. Then, somewhere among all the lowered eyebrows and disapproving looks, there was a familiar smile.

It was Andrew DaSilva, the Hawks captain and OCAA and CCAA player of the year. Sur-prisingly enough, he wasn’t a supporter of the war being fought.

“Sometimes, for fans, it can be really annoy-ing,” says DaSilva who was one of the first to be in the direct path of our buzzing. “But, for

players, it puts the game in a different dimen-sion. It makes us rowdy and it can be really enjoyable.”

DaSilva noticed a few vuvuzelas in one league game, but since they were only a few, and quite far from him, he said that they did not factor into his play.

DaSilva also says that he would not mind seeing more of them at OCAA games.

With that said, the blows continued for every pass, every free kick, every referee call and ev-erything in between: there was scarcely a mo-ment of silence.

At times, disapproval was very obvious in the spectator’s faces, slightly distasteful grimaces from the referee could be caught here and there, but the players played on.

In this game, the Humber Hawks beat the Ni-agara Knights by a score of five to one.

The Knights’ goaltender, Lindsey Colwell, who was scorched for five goals, was prob-ably the most likely to contest the horns, but surprisingly, she neither blamed them or even hated their presence, instead, she says that

like any other ‘noise’ or ‘distraction’ in a game, soccer players should be able to cope.

“If you’re a focused soccer player, like most players are, like I am, you can tune it out,” she says.

On the other side of the pitch, Hawks’ forward, Connie Tamburello, who was responsible for one of her team’s five goals and several other great chances, also did not mind the low-pitched buzz throughout the game.

“I love it actually. It makes me more motivat-ed. Just hearing the noise from the crowd gets me motivated and it gets the team going too.”

So what did this all mean? Did this mean we had won the war? Was there ever a war at all?

If there ever was, it was officially over with Tamburello’s next statement:

“I would like to see every member of the crowd with one in their hands.”

As the teams shook hands and fans cheered and talked about the game, we pursed our tired lips for the final trumpets. The war, if there ever was one, was over.

- Andrew DaSilvaOCAA & CCAA men’s soccer

player of the year

For players, it puts the game in a different dimension. It

makes us rowdy and it can be really enjoyable.

COURTESY Michael Parkinson and Loyalist College (top)

11SWEAT MAGAZINE

12 fall 2010

By EMMANUEL SAMOGLOU

Joga! Jocks using yoga to find their inner

chakra

Jana Webb, yoga instructor, walks between her stu-dents who are evenly spread out across the floor on in-dividual mats.

She instructs them on how to settle into the next pose. Breathing consciously, they all begin to hold the position. The wincing is almost audible. In the front row, someone grunts out a string of vitriol. “This shit is hard.”

This isn’t your average yoga class. This is Joga with Jana, yoga for jocks, and the students are the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League.

It’s the tail end of the season and with the players show-ing significant signs of wear and tear, Webb is there to offer her own brand of yoga specifically designed for high-level athletes.

“You have to be able to talk the talk. I’m not there to talk about butterflies soaring and mysticism,” Webb says with an air of authority while discussing the methods and tech-niques she’s developed by working with three National Hockey League goalies, as well as the Calgary Stamped-ers.

The end of class nears and Webb gets the players to come to a final resting position. After an hour-long prac-tice that seems to catch the players by surprise with its intensity, it is now time for Shavasana.

Shavasana, a Sanskrit word meaning “corpse pose” is an apt description for what this yoga posture involves. To assume the position, one lies down on the floor; head up, with arms to the side. Basically, the same position they would be in if they were in a casket.

Shavasana, relaxes by bringing the body, mind, and breath together, according to Nathania Bron, Humber College’s version of Jana Webb.

Bron teaches at a studio in the college’s recently reno-vated athletic facilities with well-polished wooden floors and full-length mirrors.

Throughout her hour-long classes, she takes her stu-dents through a complete series of postures, also known as “asanas”.

Lately, she is seeing more and more varsity athletes coming to her classes.

One of those players is Adrian Tucker – a forward for the

13SWEAT MAGAZINE

Humber Hawks men’s basketball team.Upon learning about the physical benefits that yoga

can bring, the second year Scarborough native gave it a try and says he immediately noticed increased core strength, improved flexibility, as well as an unex-pected benefit – improved mental stamina.

Bron expected these results. “Yoga helps develop the mind-body connection,

and helps them focus on the task at hand,” she says. “It keeps their minds calm.”

Bron believes it all comes down to “focus”, and she says this goes hand in hand with the way coaches approach the game with their players: being in the moment.

All of this may sound great for an athlete looking for that edge, but she acknowledges it can be a leap of faith for many players to make the decision to enter the world of Lycra, fire breathing and meditation.

“It takes them a couple times before they buy in,” Bron says, admitting that the yoga studio can be an intimidating environment where men and women, mostly women, contort their bodies into apparently awkward shapes while they move through the asa-nas.

Adding to the potentially nerve-racking experience is an athlete’s natural thirst for competition.

Watching experienced yoga practitioners flowing easily into various postures, it’s only natural that ath-letes will attempt the same feat, often with negative results, she says.

“I try to tell them it’s not a competition, even though it’s in their veins. They’re naturally competitive.”

Bron advises her students to work at their own pace, and relax when they need to.

“I find athletes have so much emotion, and they let it get the best of them sometimes.”

Getting the athlete off the court and into the yoga studio could be a daunting task, but if there is some-one that the player will listen to, it’s coach.

“Playing sports at a high level, what it does is it causes your muscles to become tight.

In order to prevent injury, you need to have a bal-anced level of flexibility in your muscles,” says Jamine Aponte, manager for a Toronto-based chain of up-scale fitness clubs and owner of Flying Geese – a professional fitness coaching business.

A firm believer in the practice of yoga, she consid-ers it a staple in her training programs for clients and athletes.

“It is an amazing method to use to help my athletes become more flexible,” she says.

Originally from the United States, Aponte prac-ticed regularly with a yoga guru while living in Florida. Upon moving to Toronto in 2006, she sought out training in Hatha yoga, one of many different systems of the ancient physical and mental discipline, which originated in India.

“There are different levels of practicing yoga. You can practice yoga as religion, or as a complement to your fitness program,” she says.

Putting this belief into practice, she has integrated yoga’s fitness benefits into another passion: coach-ing.

A dedicated lacrosse player and coach, Aponte brought her experience coaching a Division 1 team north, where she took a position with the University of Toronto women’s varsity team.

She says she would conclude every game and prac-tice with a “sun salutation,” a series of yoga asanas that includes forward bends, lunges, the infamous “down-ward dog” and plank – a pushup-like pose that targets the core.

Some players say they found Aponte’s techniques a sharp departure from traditional coaching methods. Aponte, however, says if she could successfully com-municate the perceived benefits of practicing yoga, she would easily win her players over.

“When you’re a coach, you’re the one in charge of creating and implementing the program,” she says. “Whether they are receptive to that or not, that depends on you.”

After practice, Adrian Tucker leaves his teammates as they begin their standard cool-down procedures. Instead of engaging in the traditional post-game stretching, he opts for some of the asanas he’s learned by attending Bron’s yoga classes.

Off to the side, Tucker settles into Namaskar Pars-vakonasana, also known as the “prayer twist,” a lung position with palms together at heart level, followed by a deep twist with an alternate elbow against the oppo-site knee. This is designed to open the chest and hips, lengthen the muscles of the back, and enforce the in-tegrity of the spine.

“It really, really helps,” Tucker saysFor Tucker, Wednesdays can be particularly dreadful.

The computer-engineering student begins his day at 8 a.m. with classes, and doesn’t end till later that night after an 8 p.m. practice.

Ignoring the occasional taunt from wags on the team, he continues attending Bron’s Tuesday evening yoga class, something he says helps him cope with a de-manding schedule.

“You feel a lot more relaxed, you’re not as mentally fatigued,” he says, looking energized two hours before the 8 p.m. practice. “Meditation helps relax the body and the mind.”

Not quite the words you would expect from a 6-foot-4 ball player with bass-heavy hip-hop beats belting out of a set of ear buds that hang from his neck.

Being supportive and open-minded, Humber Hawks men’s basketball coach Shawn Collins, has no reserva-tions with Tucker’s approach to stepping up his game.

“If it’s increasing his confidence on the court, puts him in a positive mind frame, I’m all for it,” he says.

“They need this stuff, it should just be a part of their training. It should be mandatory,” Jana Webb says of yoga, after being asked whether this may just be the latest fitness fad.

Webb has plans to continue to bring her Joga to serious athletes from the college/university level to professionals. And from the feedback she receives directly from members of the Argos, she is convinced of the benefits.

“These guys are in full exertion all the time; their bod-ies need a break. Their minds need to be fine-tuned; their breathing needs to be fine-tuned. That’s what yoga does.”

These guys are in full exertion all the time, their bodies need a break. Their minds need to be fine-tuned, their breathing needs to be fine-

tuned. That’s what yoga does.- Janna Webb

Yoga instructor, Toronto Argonauts

14 fall 2010

By AMANDA GRAHAM

Score board technicians and stats recorders sit on the sidelines, ready to watch every move in the game. Photo by KYLA SERGEJEW

- Colin MarchSports services co-ordinator,

Seneca

You can’t make a mistake, everyone is watching your every move.

BEHIND THE SCENES

There are just five minutes left before the first pitch. The bleachers are quickly filled. Spec-tators check their programs as the announcer introduces the athletes now jumping up and down to keep limber. The scoreboard bright-ens and players take their place.

While the spotlight has constantly shone on those on the field, beyond the white chalk lines are those who diligently work to get the ath-letes to their positions and ready to roll.

“Those are the unsung heroes; the ones that set up the bleachers, score tables, clocks, just about everything,” says Colin March, sports services co-ordinator at Seneca College.

With the height of a basketball player and the muscles of a gym rat, Marc Siren sits quietly for a moment, remembering his time on the side-lines and awaiting the first whistle. “You can’t make a mistake,” he says. “Everyone is watch-ing your every move, if you make an error, they all see.”

Siren graduated from Cambrian College last year, where he had dedicated countless hours to keeping time at varsity games.

Before the athletes hit the field, a group of students are responsible for making sure things run as smoothly as possible.

The role of a timekeeper is more than just plugging numbers into a scoreboard; it takes hours of preparation. Siren says he remembers the anxiety he felt when preparing for game day.

”It was quite a hustle, involving numerous steps,” says Siren.

The timekeeper’s job begins two hours be-fore the start of a game. First, the timekeeper must load the opposing and home teams’ last names and jersey numbers into the digital soft-ware to keep track of fouls and points during the game.

Second, the timekeeper hooks up the cables to the clock. If all is done properly, the clock turns on, lighting up the centre court. Once all things are lit, the names programmed earlier are loaded into the clock.

To finish off, the timekeeper sets up the 30-second clock and checks the foul panels. “If everything works, I just leave it on the table,” says Siren.

Though the equipment has been prepared, it’s more than just a simple click of start and pause for a timekeeper.

A prerequisite for the position is a vast knowl-edge in the particular sport, fortunately, Siren had been playing basketball for as long as he can remember.

A basketball flies high in the air, slams the backboard, rounds the rim, and falls off to the side as the crowd shouts in disappointment.

Kyle Large sits high in the bleachers docu-menting each player’s shots and movements.

Large is a third-year sports management intern at Durham College. Prior to taking on his position, he spent two years on the varsity

game staff at the college as a statistic recorder working with the computer program Cyber-Sports, that keeps track of everything in the given game.

Setting up the computer statistics software can take several days, says Large. “For a single game, it can take two to three days of prepara-tion. You have to get everything ready, stats sheets, score sheets, rosters, everything.”

To the casual viewer the job appears simple to sit among fans and click whether or not a player made a shot. But Large says it can be-come stressful and tedious at times.

“All the preparations can come as a huge rush, it can seem crazy but once everything is done, we get down to crunch time,” says Large with a hesitant laugh.

That’s when the real job comes into play. Keeping an eye on the ball, at all times, which can become quite difficult with the number of people attending varsity athletic games.

“You never know who you are going to get at a varsity game, you just have to be mindful of that. Keeping focus is the hardest thing,” says Large.

The game has finished, the clock’s buzzer announces the end of the game. The laptop carrying the statistics is closed, discarded pro-grams cover the once polished gymnasium floor.

After days of preparation, it’s time for the final game; the clean-up.

15SWEAT MAGAZINE

MALBASIC MALBASIC MALBASIC MALBASIC MALBASIC MALB

ROBERTMALBASIC

It all started in the unsightly sub-urbs of a war bitten Bosnia where a

young boy spent hours of his childhood kicking a tattered, almost mouldy looking

soccer ball in games that were nothing more than imagination. From the mud floor he called

a back yard to artificial turf, the young boy named Robbie has grown into a thick-chested, 205-pound

soccer prodigy who now goes by a manlier name. Still the 22-year-old remembers the horrors of his

homeland, the devastating sights engraved in his soul, but the very sport he has lived for was

his escape from the realities of his day-to-day life. Rob did not reveal much about his past life, but did

mention that in 1997 at the age of nine, he came to Cana-da leaving behind the only life he knew; his love for soccer

is perhaps the only thing he brought along. Fast forward to about three months ago, when Rob stepped

on the soccer pitch to start the St. Clair Saints’ season for the fourth time. He rolled up his fresh white Umbro socks over a

seasoned pair of shin guards; the shoes on his feet had already scored 39 goals in his career at the Windsor school.

It was 26 years ago when former Fleming Knight Mike Everson scored an OCAA record breaking 47 career goals. But at season’s start, St. Clair’s gem, Malbasic had a golden opportunity appearing certain to break the record only trailing the former Knight’s sniper by 8 goals.

“Not too many people get that opportunity. The record hasn’t been touched in years, it’s definitely an awesome feeling,” said the confident

fourth-year forward at the start of the 2010 campaign. It’s a little surprising the strong legged, six-foot-

one forward was so close to Everson’s mark. He’s put on the green and yellow for just three years

for the roller coaster ride that is Saints’ soccer, but while the team has had many ups and downs in recent years, Malbasic’s pure dominance has perhaps remained the only constant for St. Clair coach Mike Baraslievski.

“The goals speak for themselves,” says the veteran OCAA bench boss who calls Malbasic as the best player he’s ever coached.

Those 39 goals scored by Malbasic were in just 30 games, giving him a goals per game average well over 1.00. And just to show the non-soc-

By JUSTIN MILLERSON

COURTESY St. Clair Athletics

from humble begininngs to soccer stardom

16 fall 2010

cer world how dominating that is, have a look at these stats: In 28 games the leading scorer for Major League Soccer (MLS), Chris Wondolowski scored 18 goals this season; Didier Drogba, the leader in the English Premier League last year had scored 29 in 38; and on a larger scale, the all time leader in the same league scored an amazing 434 goals, but in 619 matches. To have more than a goal per game is rare, most soccer experts will tell you, but defying that notion Malbasic happily sat with a goals per game average of 1.30 and even the best in the world can’t relate to that kind of dominance.

Yes, it looked like a well-deserved year of monumental proportions for the 22-year-old.

The first chance to watch the star forward this season was a contest against the hungry beast that is the Humber Hawks. Scoring just two goals in his previous four games, he was playing injured, cutting his play-ing time in half. Malbasic said before the game he had something to prove against the first place team, but he was falling off pace and that bothered him.

That injury was a slight groin pull he experienced that he had been nursing for the first couple weeks of the season. Before making the trip up the 401 to Toronto on Oct. 2, he said his groin felt good, “it’s at about 75 per cent.” He was slated to start against the Hawks.

Malbasic has a quiet explosiveness to him – if that’s even possible. It’s like he’s invisible, hiding from his defenders when he doesn’t have the ball, and when he does he becomes a predator, instantly attacking his prey, the offensive zone and everyone in it.

Coach Baraslievski said he has a knack for getting in the right spots and that became very evident early in the match. The ball seemed to gravitate to him and once gravity took its course, ball control, which seemed virtually impossible for anyone else on St. Clair, was effortless for Malbasic. It was easy to see that the Bosnian native was truly an extraordinary force in the OCAA.

Ten minutes into the match Malbasic had his best scoring chance; it was still zeros on the board. Receiving a pass just outside of the goal box, he turned, contorted his body and fired a bullet shot into one of the Humber defenders, sending the ball upward. Perhaps it was this shot, but just seconds after he started hobbling, looking at the bench with a grimace.

“I don’t know what it was, it could have been a quick pass or quick movement, but I knew [my groin] was hurt again; I had to come out,” said Malbasic.

And that he did, without retuning. He helplessly witnessed a 5-0 loss from the sidelines.

“It sucks, I really want to be in there,” said the hobbling Malbasic after the loss. “It’s pretty sore right now, I’ll rest it tonight and we will see about tomorrow.”

Tomorrow was a match against a sound Sheridan College team and another chance for Rob to get back on track. After the Humber loss, he had three games to net six with a lingering groin injury to worry about. Even the OCAA all-star had his doubts. His chances fell even further after he spent the entire 90 minutes against Sheridan trying to keep warm in his bulky, black team jacket sitting on an almost empty bench. Barring some miracle, it appeared the chase

was over, Malbasic acknowledged. On October 13, on a cool afternoon, the Saints traveled north to Sarnia

for their final game of the season against the win-less Lambton College Lions. A finally healthy Malbasic was loose in his final game and while any outsider would think that scoring six goals and breaking Everson’s mark of 47 was impossible, Malbasic and his teammates believed against a team that has allowed 28 goals this season, anything was possible. With this in mind teammates tried vigorously to get the ball to Robert for the entire 90 minutes, to everyone it was clear what was on the line. St. Clair won the game 5-0 with Malbasic scoring four of the goals; things finally started to click against the 0-8 Lions.

“Always,” laughed Malbasic who finished two goals shy of 47. “All my teammates were trying to get the ball to me so that definitely helped as well.”

Today, the nursing graduate’s name still sits below Mike Everson on the all-time goals list, but now only two goals behind. Will he be returning for his final year of eligibility? For the first time he was quick to answer.

“Oh yeah, I’m definitely coming back,” says Malbasic in a very deter-mined tone of voice. “I want to go way past the record.”

oh yeah, i’m definitely

coming back. I want to go

way past the record.- Robert Malbasic

St. Clair men’s soccer forward

Photo by JUSTIN MILLERSON

9#

17SWEAT MAGAZINE

18 fall 2010

On a typical mid-October day, Evan Minshall joined his volleyball teammates, honing their skill on the hardwood of the Seneca gym.

It was a drill they had done before.It was a drill that ended much differently for

Minshall.“I can’t really remember the play, but I think I

went up to block,” says Minshall. On the way down Minshall landed on a team-

mate’s foot and rolled his ankle.“It was very painful. I knew what happened [and

it] wasn’t too good and our team therapist, Chris

Walsh was there within seconds,” says Minshall. He gave credit to Walsh, a student therapist

from Sheridan on his placement at Seneca, for getting him through those initial moments of confusion and pain.

Playing it safe and on the recommendation of Walsh, Minshall went to the hospital for a further look.

No broken bones, the doctor confirmed, but there was some ligament and muscle damage, which can be a bigger and more long-term problem.

Broken bones heal fairly quickly, but tissue injuries can be tedious to rehabilitate as they It would seem that Walsh made the right call.

“You’re part of the team, basically because you’re a necessity to the welfare of the team.” That is how Walsh explained it. “If they don’t have [a therapist] they can’t play at 100 per cent, if they can’t play at 100 per cent they may not win. At this level that’s the name of the game.”

Making those tough decisions can be diffi-cult, but it’s the therapist’s job to take out an

If they don’t have [a therapist] they can’t play at 100 per cent, if they can’t play at 100 per cent they may not win.

By JASON RAUCH

Between Bumps n’

Bruises

IS MORE THAN JUST

a BANDAGE JOB.

- Chris WalshStudent therapist, Sheridan

Photo by JASON RAUCH

BEING AN ATHLETIC THERAPIST

19SWEAT MAGAZINE

Athletic therapist, Emma Wright from Sheridan College, tends to Seneca College soccer player, Brittney Norman before a match.

injured player regardless of how much the team needs him or her to win.

“You’re not trying to be their buddy. You’re not trying to be a parent. It can’t be either one of those two,” says Dr. Frances Flint, co-ordinator of the athletic therapy course at York University. “You’re trying to be somebody who is really go-ing to be really looking at what their needs are.”

Dr. Flint tells her therapy students the best way to do their job, gain the athlete’s trust, and keep a level head in the heat of any moment, is to be professional.

“If [the athletes] see that you are there to help them with any injuries and help them perform better, then that’s automatically something that says this person is here to make me play bet-ter,” reasoned Dr. Flint.

Seneca’s head athletic therapist, Steve Ko-pas, helps his student therapists realize they are in a difficult situation.

“We’re in a little bit of an interesting position as far as our role on the team as a therapist, because technically we’re on the coaching staff, but we spend most of our time with the

athletes,” Kopas says. “We kind of sit right on that fence of where

we’re with the athletes… They have to have that rapport with the therapist and trust with them.”

With the help of the Seneca therapists, Min-shall was ready to play after only six weeks off. His first game since the injury was November 23, with visiting Durham.

In the end the Sting lost, but Minshall was just happy to be back playing the game he loves.

“That was a pretty big moment for me. I was really excited to get playing again.”

20 fall 2010

Hold theapplauseSometimes the worst injuries are the small ones

20 fall 2010

Rosie Ormeno, goalkeeper for the Humber women’s soccer team knows how easily a finger can be brutalized in a matter of a split second.

During a co-ed soccer game this past summer she tried catching a ball fired toward the net. “I end-

ed up punching it. It hit my hand hard and my knuck-les went in.”

She didn’t think much of it at the time, but Ormeno awoke the next morning with her whole hand purple and swollen. “I couldn’t move my finger.”

The small finger seems prone to misadventure, says Rob Werstine, a physiotherapist at the Fowler-Kennedy Sport Medicine Clinic and an adjunct professor at the University of Western Ontario’s School of Graduate Studies. Not only is it the finger with the greatest flexibility, but it also tends to migrate away from the others, making it more vulnerable.

In his clinic, Werstine is no stranger to hand injuries. He treats a range of injuries, from simple mallet fingers in basketball players who have had fast moving passes strike the end of their fingers to more complex metacarpal (long bone) fractures in volleyball players who dive into the floor trailing after a ball.

Imagining her small finger was only jammed, Ormeno says she went on with life for six weeks before seeing the doctor. X-rays ruled out a fracture and Ormeno was told a tendon was partially torn. She was sent home with an aluminum splint that completely stopped her from using her finger.

Werstein says hand injuries that seem small are often underap-preciated by family and emergency room doctors. He says, these injuries, particularly nagging ones, have a way of changing the way people go about living. He says too often, people stop playing

sports that bother their hands and become less active in other parts of

their lives. With a determined spirit Ormeno did not

let her injury slow her down. She says she continued working out by lifting weights us-

ing her other fingers and continued playing soccer.

After toughing it out with the splint for several weeks, Ormeno says she started taping her small finger to

her ring finger for protection and to prevent it from getting caught on things like her steering wheel.

Reflecting on her experience, Ormeno says she is frustrated that her recovery is taking so long. After four months, she says she is left with a finger that is still crooked and has less than full flexibility and strength. “It does not feel like it is getting any better, it feels like it is getting worse.”

Ormeno has recently gone back to wearing a splint full-time off the field. The new one is much larger, covering most of her hand, and hides the swelling along the edge of her hand and her small finger. She does not like to complain, but says the pain, especially around the base knuckle, is increasing when she catches or dives for a ball.

Ormeno is not out of the woods yet. She says she has recently been referred for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to take a closer look at what is happening inside her hand.

Like Ormeno, Bobby Anderson understands how hand injuries can linger. Towering over most people at six feet 4 inches, Anderson is a veteran volleyball player for Humber and can recount in vivid detail his ordeal after breaking the ring and small fingers on his dominant hand early in the season. He says it was over three months before he returned to the game.

By CATHERINE LABELLE

21SWEAT MAGAZINE 21SWEAT MAGAZINE

Rugby players tape up their hands to avoid injury during a game (left & background).

Photo JUSTIN MILLERSON

Rosie Ormeno in action, stopping a ball (top).

Photo CATHERINE LABELLE

Anderson says the recovery was tough, not because of pain, but from losing his independence and having to just watch games he could not play in. “It was a learning experi-ence to say the least.” He says his injury affected all parts of his life. Having his

hand in a cast for several weeks, Anderson says he couldn’t write, so he had to resort to taking tests orally and relying on the

good nature of friends to email class notes. Anderson pauses to lift up his baseball cap to run his hand through his dark hair threaded with white as he continues to describe the impact of his injury on his school life.

He says he could not spot anyone lifting weights and as a result had to drop a Health and Fitness class.

Back at home, Anderson says even the small things that are often taken for granted became a chore. He is quick to give credit to his roommate who Anderson says helped him with a lot of the day-to-day living tasks.

He says everything from cooking and cleaning to simply making a bed seemed impossible. “Even eating soup; trying to get the spoon in without dipping the cast.”

Once his cast was removed, Anderson’s right hand was appreciably smaller than his left. To help with recovery, Anderson says he fit in therapy three times a week on top of his full-time studies, work and practice sessions. “Therapy helped a lot.”

Anderson says his absence was hard on the team. “For the leader-ship and what I brought to the table to be gone instantly was a bit of a shock to the guys.”

He says he sat down and spoke to them all in a team meeting, promising them he would “work his tail off” to return in January. An-derson says when he returned the guys were playing really well and the team went on to win the provincials, finishing fourth in the country.

Jeremy Cross of the Coaches Association of Ontario, says when a player is injured the focus should be more on the team. “It should never really be about one person.”

He says, while players have roles to play, they are also part of a team for which they are willing to sacrifice and commit to an ultimate goal. “So you may lose one, but you all get stronger.”

Drew Laskoski, an athletic therapist and president of the Ontario Athletic Therapists Association, has seen his fair share of hand inju-ries on the field. He says the worst are the finger joint dislocations. “They come running up to you and they are holding their hand up for you — and either the baby finger or one of their other fingers is point-ing at right angles to their hand.”

Laskoski says when athletes are hurt, and they are going to experi-ence some pain but no long-term injury, then it’s important that the coaching and training staff sit down together to make informed deci-sions. “Because ultimately it is the athlete’s body, so they have to have as much input as us and the coaching staff.”

Laskoski says that, as a therapist, he not only tries to provide the best medical advice, but he carefully considers how he would want his own son to be treated. Looking toward the future, he says thera-pists must consider whether “it is going to be a long-term injury that can affect him or her from picking up their children when they are 40 or 50.”

Werstine says athletes who participate in sports long enough, re-gardless of their talent, will inevitably end up with some sort of injury. “Risk is an inherent part of sport, there’s no way around it.”

He says, as a therapist, he is powerless unless an athlete tells them they have been hurt.

Ormeno says she thought she had just jammed her finger and if she had known otherwise, she would have done things differently. “I would have seen the doctor right away or said something.”

22 fall 2010

23SWEAT MAGAZINE

Keeping it Clean By JON HEMBREY

Photo by JON HEMBREY

Mike Dvorak has been sitting in his smelly, sweat-drenched clothes for the last 40 min-utes, waiting for something that is not the sort of thing that can be forced. His name was se-lected for drug testing and ever since his bas-ketball practice ended he has not been out of sight of his chaperone, an official whose job it is to make sure he does not cheat his urine test.

Dvorak admits that he was worried . . . well not entirely.

“The only thing I was nervous about was peeing in front of someone,” says the OCAA guard as he reflects back on the random test

conducted three years ago. Otherwise, he had nothing to fear.

“I knew I was on the straight and narrow and have always been,” he says.

The summer steroids scandal at the Univer-sity of Waterloo has put the issue of drugs in sports back in the minds of many athletes and coaches, including those in the OCAA. Many may be wondering what impact those events will have on the college athletic world.

Following the arrest of one of its players for drug trafficking in June, and in a Canadian first, the entire Waterloo football team was given blood and urine tests to check for drugs.

Storm clouds gathered as the story spread throughout Canada and the rest of the world.

Tests conducted by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sports [CCES], a non-profit organiza-tion that strives to foster drug-free sport, re-vealed that nine members of the team tested positive for steroids. In a more ominous, and this time North American first, one member of the team tested positive for human growth hor-mone [HGH].

Bob Copeland, athletic director at Waterloo, says the results were shocking to coaches and staff. “It was gut wrenching,” he explains.

Even more so, Copeland says, because the

Following the recent

steroids scandal at the

university of waterloo,

coaches and athletes

may be wondering what

it means for the ocaa

24 fall 2010

players who tested positive for steroids were not on the radar of coaches and staff. “Had I, with my knowledge at the time and the knowl-edge of others, tried to pick out 20 people, let’s say a target test, I suspect we would have only come up with two or three of the nine,” he ad-mits.

For Copeland, this is the insidious nature of a problem that cannot easily be detected but casts a shadow on all athletes based on ru-mours and suspicions.

But at the OCAA the issue of performance enhancements doesn’t seem to be an issue. Blair Webster, executive director of the OCAA, says steroids are not a concern. Mostly be-cause there is no football, a sport that attracts most of the attention, and in terms of sheer numbers, most of the CCES testing.

Jim Flack, athletic director and men’s basket-ball coach at Sheridan College, agrees, saying that the type of sport changes the risks and probabilities of steroid usage.

“It might just be that it’s not the most use-ful thing in the world for a basketball player to get jacked up on human growth hormone and other drugs, nor a volleyball player nor a soccer player,” he says.

However, college athletes still undergo ran-dom drug testing, also through the CCES. In September a member of Fanshawe College’s basketball team tested positive for marijuana, receiving a one-month suspension.

The CCES can randomly test any player at any time during practices or games. Howev-er, most of the testing is limited to Nationals, where a handful of athletes from each team are tested.

Eric Collins, athletic program officer at Fan-shawe, says the school draws a clear line on clean sport. “Although that is considered by most to be a minor infraction, it is something that as a college we are taking very, very seri-ously,” he explains.

Flack says it is these types of drugs that are of primary concern to coaches and staff at the OCAA. Regardless, he says the number of vio-lations does not constitute a drug problem. “If you want to get into performance detracting drugs like marijuana or cocaine or anything like that, that’s an entirely different issue. But, still, our positive findings have been very small, if any,” he says.

The CCES publishes an annual report with statistics on the number of tests and violations from all sports organizations under its purview. Over the last five years around 100 athletes from the Canadian College Athletics Associa-tion, the national body of which the OCAA is a part, have been tested. There have been no more than three violations a year, sometimes none, and most of these have been for mari-juana. Also, college football, which is played in Quebec, makes up for the majority of tests.

Jennifer Bell, head athletic therapist at Hum-ber who has helped the CCES conduct tests, says the other concern is simply accidental vio-lations. “For us it’s always monitoring things like

cough and cold medications, allergy medica-tion, all over-the-counter. There is a list of what they can and cannot take and most of them don’t always pay attention to that,” she says.

Flack says the events at Waterloo will have no impact on OCAA policies or approaches to drugs.

“I don’t think a number of football players at Waterloo University doing HGH or steroids is, in any way shape or form, reflective of anything we’re experiencing at the OCAA so I don’t think it behooves us to change our approach one bit,” he says.

Part of that approach involves a mandatory education program that all college athletes must complete. The 45-minute online course provides information on banned substances and the harmful effects of drug abuse through a series of slides and quizzes.

Most of the education is designed to get athletes thinking about what sort of legal sub-stances athletes are putting into their bodies, explains Bell. She says many athletes are un-

aware of the ill effects of caffeine drinks, protein drinks and even over-the-counter medication.

Bell says there has been a change, as a result of Waterloo, in the way college athletes think about drugs. “I’ve noticed a lot more athletes are checking in and checking medications and being a little bit more responsible than they may have in the past,” she says.

According to Flack, the two-fold drug policy of random testing and educational programs combined with the small number of infractions is enough for the OCAA. At a certain point, he says, individual responsibility takes over.

“When you’ve laid out the rules and you’ve laid out the parameters around which the test-ing will happen and you’ve laid out the conse-quences and they still choose to violate, then that’s on them.”

Back in Waterloo, Copeland is dealing with the fallout of a few individuals. Only nine of the 62-player team tested positive for steroids but the 53 who were clean shared in the public-ity misery. And much of his work will now go towards rebuilding the team image. “The pri-mary purpose of that test was to exonerate the vast majority whom we presumed would not be using these substances,” he says. “We felt that there would be a cloud of suspicion over every player for the rest of their career and well beyond Waterloo.”

We felt that there would be a cloud of suspicion over every

player for the rest of their career and well beyond Waterloo.

- Bob CopelandWaterloo University athletic director

Photo by JON HEMBREYOntario college athletes are subject to random testing at both practices and games.

alcohol at varsity sporting events

25SWEAT MAGAZINE

alcohol at varsity sporting events

an examination of why colleges aren’t selling

NO ALCOHOL BEYOND THIS

POINT

By JONATHON BRODIE

It was halftime at my college’s basketball game and I decided to get a tasty alcoholic beverage to rid myself of the aftertaste of stale, pregame popcorn.

I walked over to the concession stand and asked the woman working the counter for two of her finest draft beers.

“I’m sorry but we don’t sell beer here. Actually, we don’t serve any alcohol here,” she replied.

I was completely heartbroken and hadn’t felt such pain since grade seven when my first love, Lyndsey Schneider, broke up with me right before social studies. I slinked back to my seat with another bag of stale popcorn.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Does this mean my educational institute wants me to be unhappy while watching my school’s athletes?

The game ended and after going across campus to get a drink at the pub, I quickly got on the horn. Are my school’s fans the only (upon legal age limit) crowd watching our games without any option between stay-ing sober or getting mildly inebriated? Intoxicated enough to have the courage to dance along with the cheerleaders at halftime? Or even so drunk that the heckling becomes so loud and obnoxious that security has to use forceful tactics?

Upon further investigation, only four schools out of the 27 that are reg-istered to the Ontario Colleges Athletics Association sell any alcoholic beverages during sports. For the most part, the schools that do sell alcohol sell it only for one game.

Trent University, which is part of the OCAA and the Ontario University Athletics Association, confessed that they don’t normally sell alcohol at their varsity games with one exception. “As part of our annual homecom-ing, the Conferences section of the university operates a beer garden on campus for returning alumni and students,” says Bill Byrick, director of athletics for the Peterborough university. “It is not adjacent to any sport-ing events, but proceeds go toward funding our varsity rowing program. This operates concurrently with the Head of the Trent, the largest single day rowing event in the country.”

At the university level, beer gardens are plentiful at sporting events. In fact, the final tally came to just more than half of Ontario universities selling alcohol during athletic events. Most of the universities that sell alcohol offer it during hockey and football games exclusively.

“We have many alumni at our football games and there is a demand for the service so our food services department took the service over,” says Peter Baxter, director of athletics and recreation for Wilfred Laurier Uni-versity. “At hockey games the City of Waterloo sells beer at our games.

Photo by KYLA SERGEJEW

26 fall 2010

Since we use a city facility they offer the service and keep the profit.” This scenario is common, with most universities hiring a company’s service to control alcohol.

McMaster’s athletic director, Jeff Giles, put it more bluntly as to why his school offers alcohol at football, basketball, and volleyball games.

“Why do we sell it? Because people want it and it drives attendance,” says Giles.

When I spoke with college athletic directors whose schools don’t sell alcohol at sporting events, I asked each one of them if they would con-sider selling alcohol if they knew it would bring in a few hundred more fans.

To my surprise, all but one athletic director said that they still wouldn’t consider it. Most cited potential hassles over licensing issues and alco-hol laws, for their collective thumbs down.

“Some of our athletic directors talk offline and talk from time-to-time in our meetings casually about it,” says Ken Babcock, athletic director at Durham College. “If you’re not set up for it properly then it’s pretty difficult to manage... It does create more work, more liability, and they relate to an institution’s insurance as well.

“Do I think it can be successful? I think so if it’s managed properly but it would take some other resources that departments often don’t have like time and staff,” says Babcock.

There’s a lot of red tape to go through in getting a permit to sell alcohol at a college sporting event, unless it’s held under the authority of a cater-er’s endorsement, which is why most universities have other companies deal with the problem.

“You need to get a special occasion permit and that usually covers your grandpa’s 90th birthday or a bar mitzvah,” says Lisa Murray, a spokesperson for the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario. “You wouldn’t be allowed to have people drinking any alcohol in tiered seating like bleachers for obvious safety reasons. You would need a separate drinking area to make it at all possible.”

The holder of a liquor sales licensce, which most colleges have, may apply for a special occasion permit provided the event is not advertised to the general public, it doesn’t have any intention of making a profit from the event, and intoxication is not permitted.“I don’t know if a lot of schools would feel comfortable handling something like this because there’s a lot of liability issues on the line,” says Murray.

“No one will sue you personally. Suing the school is a whole different kettle of fish.”

Is it so crazy to think that schools should sell alcohol at sporting events? All but seven colleges boast pubs on at least one of their cam-puses in Ontario.

Niagara and Sault College though, have come up with a creative way to incorporate the school’s pub with athletics.

This year Niagara opened a pub that has a glass wall that looks into the gym next door to accommodate imbibing patrons who want to catch a live game.

“Our hours of operation are from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. unless there is a varsity game, we will stay open an hour after the last game,” says Jennifer Marasco, student centre manager for Niagara. “We were com-pletely sold out on our opening day, and there was probably about 30 to 50 people along the window which sort of made it hard to see if you were farther back. People just come through, have a drink, and then leave. We’ve never had any problems with anyone.”

Sault College has plans to break ground this year on a new athletic facility that will give the school an opportunity to sell alcohol, some-thing their facility now doesn’t allow.

“Right now our size and age of our facility is not conducive to an environment where we can safely serve alcohol. In the new place that is part of the design element, to have a cornered off area because it seems to be the trend right now,” says Scott Grey, athletic director for Sault College. “I think having this area makes it more social in a controlled environ-ment.”

The new facility is planned to open in 2013.

I may never get to sip a cold beer while slurring a school-spirited chant in my college’s gymnasium, but I’m going to make a bold prediction right now, and say that in 2013 Sault College will see the biggest jump in their school’s enrollment history.

I know I already have my en-rollment papers filled out . . . go Cougars go!

I think having this area makes it more social in a controlled environment.

- Scott GreySault College athletic director

The Core Pub at Niagra College is attached to the school gym, allowing students to drink while watching varsity sports. COURTESY Lindsay Costello

27SWEAT MAGAZINE

28 fall 2010

Photo LANCE HOLDFORTH

One eye is closed and sweat stings the other as the fighter dodges takedown attempts and wild punches from his op-ponent. The roar of a blood-thirsty crowd drives him to keep going when a knee to the face puts everything in slow motion. He shakes it off, circles his opponent and lunges.

Putting his shoulder into the opponent’s waist and lifting his legs, the fighter takes his opponent down. In a split second on the ground he positions one leg across his opponent’s chest and the other over his face. The opponent’s arm is exposed until the fighter pries it over his leg and the sound of cracking bone is louder than the crowd.

The referee breaks the men apart and hoists the fighter’s hand in the air announcing the win of his first mixed martial arts (MMA) fight by an arm-bar submission.

This is a scenario that Algoma Univeristy’s basketball coach Vyron Phillips is all too familiar with. Phillips fought, and won, his first MMA fight at the King of the Cage event in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan where the crowd roared as he defeated his opponent in 1:22 of the first round by a technical knockout. “It (MMA) has been really really amazing, and very different than basketball,” says Phillips. “MMA alone is a different feeling, dif-

By LANCE HOLDFORTH

MMA

There’s way more technique than people think there is. It’s more like

a chess match.- Vyron Phillips Basketball coack,

Algoma University

NOTTAPPING

OUT

29SWEAT MAGAZINE

ferent training and different cardio.” Even though the Canadian Medical Association recom-

mended a nation-wide ban on the sport, fighters such as Phillips have devoted their lives to getting into Cana-dian octagons. “When I was younger I did a bit of box-ing growing up, but boxing wasn’t the type of thing you

do in high school,” he says. “After college I had the chance to go overseas to play basketball, or pursue

what I always wanted to do, and that is to be a fighter.”

Every time Phillips trains he takes a beating. He spars with trainers who hit him, grapple him and bend bones with the intent of causing him pain, but he does it

because it makes him better, it gives him the skill he used to win his 2-0 professional record. “It was my first fight, but I trained like I was a pro. When I came into that fight I came in over prepared,” he says. “I have a really great Mauy Thai guy who fought in Thailand, a jui jitsu guy, and a semi pro boxing guy. Having one of the best camps around has really helped.”

Phillips began boxing while growing up in Minneapolis and later pursued an education in sociology at Algoma University, but never lost the desire to be an ultimate fighter. “There’s way more technique than people think there is. It’s more like a chess match. Boxing is worse to me than an MMA fight,” he says. “Playing basketball guys get clipped going up for a rebound, guys in hockey get split open. If you’re going to ban MMA you should ban every contact sport. It’s not as brutal as people make it out to be.”

Under section 83 of the Canadian Criminal Code MMA was deemed illegal because the goal is to incapacitate the opponent by force, which puts the sport in the “prize fighting” category. In Quebec, British Columbia and Al-berta, the code has variations which sanction the sport and allow professional and amateur fights. The future of the sport in Ontario, and now the country, has been shrouded with petitions from fans demanding the sport be legal, litigation issues with politicians and doctors recommending a nation-wide ban.

In early August, the Ontario government amended the code to allow live Ultimate Fighting Championships in

the province, but later that month at the CMA’s 143rd annual general council meeting, an overwhelming 84 per cent of doctors voted to have the sport banned across the country.

CMA president Dr. Jeff Turnbull said the federal gov-ernment will have the final say. “The next step will be the CMA board, probably through me as the president, to make clear our position to the government through writ-ing, or presentations,” says Turnbull. “We feel, and felt, it’s very important that as physicians we speak out when we see significant risk to the wellbeing of our popula-

tion.” The CMA stands outside the octagon

because of the high risk of brain damage caused from repeated blows to the head. “Not only do we have the acute problems of immediate damage to the brain, or blood on the brain, but we see chronic damage to the brain, and that results in illnesses like dementia and Parkinson’s syndrome,” he says.

Mike Durst has taken kicks to the head, the shins, the abdomen and everywhere else a person can be hit training in Muay Thai kick boxing. The 22-year-old studies film production at Humber College, but he trains in the art of hurting opponents. “I like

striking, but Muay Thai is like a cultural thing too. It’s a really big sport. In Thailand it’s like Canada’s hockey, everyone does it,” he says. “There’s a whole different as-pect even in training for fights.”

For more than two years Durst has left training sessions bruised and sore from elbows to the face and kicks to the stomach from sparing partners eager to toughen him up, but that didn’t stop the novice from going to Thai-land to fight a professional. “I was there for four months and trained twice a day for six days a week. It was pretty intense,” Durst says. “My first fight was against a Thai who had 80 fights. I lost, but it went five rounds and it was everything: elbows, knees and no padding.”

Durst says squaring off with a seasoned fighter was worth every bloodletting-hit he took. “It was intense. I was pretty beat up, but it was good. I thought I won the fight.” Durst has tried to take his love for the sport to a professional level in Ontario, but has felt the limitations. “I’ve had a fight or two here, but it doesn’t go on your record because it’s kind of underground, so even if you do fight here, it doesn’t go on your professional record,” he says. “We have to travel to Calgary or wherever it’s legal.”

Durst started training when a Muay Thai class was offered York University, where he was a student. If the same opportunity came up at college, he would jump at the chance, he said. “If Humber were to start a Muay Thai program it would be great, and I’m sure it would explode,” he says. “I would be involved, and I would maybe even teach.”

Although the proposed ban could again ring the bell on MMA in the province, the sport is technically legal until a revision of the Criminal Code states otherwise. The Ulti-mate Fighting Championship’s (UFC) official website has no listings of future events in Ontario, but officials have stated they hope to organize the province’s first live UFC event by early 2011.

In the meantime, Phillips and Durst say they will con-tinue to train with hopes of showcasing their skill on home turf.

COURTESY Mike Durst

30 fall 2010

YOUHOW DO

SPELL

Photo by GURPREET GHAG

31SWEAT MAGAZINE

?

The buzzer goes off and there’s a shuffling in the crowd. They look restless and ready to take a break from the game. The sound system crackles to life and the announcer presents the team through a cacophony of the crowd’s conversations. A pack of young woman dressed in skin-tight leggings, and shiny belly cut tank tops run to the centre of the gymnasium. The crowd turns into a hush as the arms swing in unison to an echo of noise.

After a brief moment, the team members run back onto the side-lines and a minute into the game they begin to chant and rap with so much ferocity it throws off the opposing sides’ game.

Brad Greenwood, athletic director of St. Lawrence, says that he was looking for a way to increase school spirit and found the ap-peal was stronger for dance packs. “It seemed to come back loud and clear that it was dance pack that people wanted to be involved with.”

Katie Hagan, coach of the Humber Hype dance team says the

interest in dance is a growing craze. “In terms of entertainment, just the types of shows that you have on TV now and movies that are coming out now are all dance related where in the past you had a lot of cheerleading movies,” Hagan says.

For Hagan, dance came to Humber first. “In the Humber world, we were here first.” Hagan says the Humber Hype is in its 10th season and while acrobatic cheering in the United States is huge, in Canada dance dominates.

Hagan says she sees dance and cheer in college as different forms of entertainment. “They do from the outside look very simi-lar but from a dance perspective and cheer perspective they’re very different.”

Coach David-Lee Tracey, also known as “Trace”, who led the back-to-back championship team at Fanshawe with 3 wins and also led the Western University cheer team with 24 victories, says dance packs have very different roles. “They don’t call themselves

By Tai Duong

31SWEAT MAGAZINE

32 fall 2010

cheerleaders… They are synchronized dance, ” says Trace.

At Fanshawe, the team does not perform at games like dance packs do. “We only cheer, we only are on the sidelines.”

Cheerleaders have two forms says Tracey, “There’s cheerleading and really being an organized extension of the crowd… A true collegiate cheerleader acts as an link between cheering and the game.” The other role, on the competitive side, involves stunts, tumbling and throwing people in the air. “It’s purely for the enjoyment of doing the tricks and performance,” says Tracey.

Rubelyn Ubando, manager of the Mighty Falcon Danc-ers, says her team tries to get the crowd rolling and in-volved in the game. Although Fanshawe’s Ubando leads the team to cheer and dance she says the dancers did not want to be considered cheerleaders. “I started it to get more people out at home games and more involved in school activities.”

Candice McPhail, a member of the Fanshawe Falcon dance team is enthusiastic about doing both to increase school spirit but says dancing and cheering on the team is something new and unfamiliar. “It’s new for me to kind of combine the two together. I’m not used to it. I think this year it’s more like a stepping stone to combine the two together,” McPhail says.

Kristina McCahon, Humber Hawks cheer coach, says the competitive spirit of the cheering is what’s taking over for the team at Humber College. “I’m taking a more com-petitive route,” McCahon says.

At Humber and Fanshawe the challenge is the short length of time the students are in the sport. “For a uni-versity student I’ll have them for four to five years. For a College I`ll have them for one or two. Three if I`m super dooper lucky,” says Tracey. But that’s not the only prob-lem for cheer teams.

McCahon, says “the problem is you don’t know what’s really going to happen year to year. There really isn’t a long term carry over.”

Tracey says that’s a challenge that’s universal to all col-lege teams.

Tracey says a cheer teams’ goal is to collect the yelling power of the crowd and make an impact on the game. “If you can make one person say one word once during a game then you have achieved the objective.”

32 fall 2010

COURTESY Andrea SenykWilfrid Laurier’s Golden Hawks in action.

COURTESY Andrea SenykFanshawe cheer team in competition.

Photo by Tai DuongHumber Hype dance team in practice

COURTESY Andrea Senyk

Fanshawe dance team

33SWEAT MAGAZINE

EXTENDEDOVERTIME

By Brandi Doucett

Photo by GURPREET GHAG

It’s game day, Morgan Kelly is decked out from head to toe in the Durham Lords’ green and gold. Even her backpack is colour-coordinated and boasts the Lords logo. At first glance it’s clear – Kelly is a dedicated member of the women’s soccer team. Her commitment isn’t surprising since this is her fifth year as the goalie for the team. “I think a lot of the older girls take a leading role because they know the skill level of the teams we’ll be playing, so we can pass on our expertise to the younger ones,” says Kelly.

Until recently, college athletes were eligible to play on varsity teams for only four years. That changed two years ago when the OCAA added a fifth year, says OCAA executive director Blair Webster. But with most college programs running for two or three years, the eligibility cap continues to create a disconnect between athletics and academics.

Kelly began her varsity career in 2004 when she enrolled in a three-year computer animation program. She played on the soccer team for each of those three years. After she graduated she found a job working in her new field, but two years later she found her way back to Durham.

“Taking time off was important,” she says. “because I was an animator for two years and it allowed me to see if I wanted to do that for the rest of my life. It’s sort of shock-

34 fall 2010

ing when you get out there. ‘Can I really do this? ”The answer, for Kelly, was no. “It was too much spending 10 hours a

day on the computer. My love of sports was so great, that I thought, ‘I think I should go into something more athletic, something more physi-cal.’” And knowing she could come back to college and still play soc-cer made the decision to enroll in another program, fitness and health promotion, that much easier.

“I maybe wouldn’t have wanted to come back to school as much if I knew that I couldn’t play soccer.” Since re-upping, Kelly has man-aged to carry a full course load and complete each of her courses in the standard amount of time. While she did achieve high grades she says it can be extremely difficult, particularly with the time commit-ment demanded by a varsity team.

Teresa George, who plays on the women’s volleyball team at Hum-ber College, agrees that some athletes find it hard to take on a full course load and still attend all of the practices and games. The price has been taking an extra couple of months to complete the two-year law clerk program.

After graduation this spring, she will consider taking the emergency telecommunications program, since she still has one more year of athletic eligibility.

George says volleyball is a really important part of her life. “If we

don’t medal at Nationals it might drag me back because I’ll be think-ing ‘what if’ in the coming year.” She is quick to add, she wouldn’t enroll in any program just to play on the team. She says that school comes first for her, so she would only take a program that would ben-efit her future career.

But, Durham’s Kelly recognizes that not all athletes are as level-headed. “I think most definitely people [sometimes] finish programs and then just take random things to keep playing, and that’s just the love of the sport.”

George isn’t sure how she feels about the eligibility cap. On one hand she says, “I don’t think it should be unlimited because then people would just be coming here for sports . . . [but] the one thing I dislike about the five-year eligibility is that after you’ve played a cer-tain number of season games then you’ve used your eligibility.” And that can be a particular headache when injury time is factored into the equation.

According to the rules, if a student is injured and can’t play for the rest of the season, they have still used a year of their eligibility. How-ever, if an athlete is hurt “typically within the first five games you can apply to have your eligibility reinstated,” but it all depends on the season, the sport and the athletic director at the specific college says OCAA’s Webster. It’s up to the athletic director to apply on behalf of the athlete.

George says the five-year eligibility rule does take the stress out of worshipping the twin shrines of the lab and the gym. “It gets hectic, you miss class because of games and you have practice late.”

Kelly says she, “hopes people use the five year [eligibility limit] to find out what they really want to do, I hope that girls don’t use the five years to just play soccer and decrease their course load.

“I’d rather take a program and finish it in the normal amount of time, rather than to stretch a three-year program into four or five years.” But for some that’s easier said than done, she says.

I think most definitely people fin-ish programs and then just take

random things to keep playing, and that’s just the love of the sport.

- Morgan KellyDurham college soccer player

35SWEAT MAGAZINE

36 fall 2010

37SWEAT MAGAZINE

Like nails on a chalkboard, the players’ shoes screech across the gymnasium floor. Sweat glistens under the intense lighting as the players leap at the coach’s command. After a 16-year drought, volleyball is finally back at Conestoga College.

Marlene Ford, varsity athletic co-ordinator at Conestoga, says she was just a final-year student when both the men and women’s volleyball program was cut in 1993 for financial reasons. “The crowd attendance was very low,” she says.

The college decided to reinstate the program Ford adds, because nothing brings a school together like sport. The impetus for the revival was pushed along by a couple of players who were on a mission to bring the game back.

Matt Dicks, 24, was one of those players. He began his volleyball career in high school and then went on to play on Humber College’s varsity team. Dicks is now back at school studying business at Conestoga and says he was determined to see a volleyball team there. “It took a lot of effort and there were tons of emails sent out, but it was all about dedication and how badly we wanted to it to happen.”

Ford says they felt it was something they needed to do for the students and the college.“I think it’s great Conestoga has added a team,” says Christine Lamey the coach of the

women’s team. “Colleges that are cutting sports teams don’t realize what they are cutting. Being on a sports team is such an invaluable part of being a student.”

Ariel Castromayor, the men’s coach, says the secret to motivating the men’s team was to treat the sport as if it never went away. “I have been running it as if we have been around for 20 years.”

“Coaching volleyball was one of those things that I just fell into,” Castromayor says. A former centre for Sheridan in 2002 and 2003, he says he realized he wasn’t keeping up

with the others in terms of height, power and strength. “I was the oldest guy in the OCAA,” he laughs. What he lacked in stature, he says, he made up in volume and smarts. Castro-mayor discovered he had a knack for identifying strengths and weaknesses and was able to communicate.

“We are investing in people; we are investing in time in the gym and outside of the gym with plyometric workouts and sports psychologists.” he says. The goal: “We want to make the top four,” he says. He knows that this is a lofty goal as the Condors are in pool with powerhouses from Humber, Seneca, Mohawk, Fanshawe and Sheridan.

“Our secondary goal is to have a better than 500 season, which means we will win more than we lose.”

For Lamey the goal is to establish a solid program that will draw students to Conestoga to play volleyball in addition to studies. “Conestoga has a great academic record,” she says. “If we combine that with a winning volleyball team then we are going to get the best student athletes.”

Castromayor says varsity volleyball has helped put the spotlight on the Kitchener-based college. “Volleyball is very high profile, especially in large communities,” he says. “Volley-ball opens Conestoga up enormously because it is the only college in the area.”

As November drew to a close, the Condors were 10th in the men’s division, and the women’s team was ninth.

By BRONWYN ROWSELL

BACK

GAME

COURTESY Conestoga Athletics

THE

IN

38 fall 2010

It’s a sunny but brisk autumn day at Fletch-er’s Fields in Markham. Far removed from the suburban sprawl of identical homes and big box stores is this

vast open space. Except for some faint traffic noise, it’s hard to believe the city is so close. Twenty-five Ontario high school rugby teams have gathered to play a tournament

and the focus today is the game – not the competition.

Dan Kunanec is watching his ju-nior boys team play. The Don Mills

Collegiate Institute coach is strangely silent among the cheering and yelling people on the sidelines. He stays si-lent, he says, to help students learn

to make their own decisions. “As coaches, we talk

about try-ing to help them be-c o m e decision-

m a k e r s and then, if

we just tell them what to do, we’ve de-

feated our own purpose.”For Kunanec screaming sideline platitudes about

“winning” is not an option. “If you focus on winning and not development, you’re going to skip some steps.” Athletes may win more games, but that is not going to help them develop fundamental sports skills along the way, he says.

That’s a philosophy that rings a lot of bells with Richard Way, who is involved in Canadian Sport for Life, which he describes as a guide to help athletic organizations deliver a higher quality of sport. It is also the driving force behind the long-term athlete development model, also known as LTAD.

LTAD signifies a shift in how sport is taught and how athletes are trained across Canada. It takes the lifespan of a person and details step-by-step

how physical activity should be applied through life. Though it uses age to separate the levels, the model emphasizes maturation in size, emotional and men-tal preparedness.

That’s a complicated way of saying that younger athletes need to be taken out of skills-specific si-los and allowed to develop across a wide swathe of sport-specific skills. The plan, funded by federal government department Sport Canada, calls for age-appropriate strategies in all sports and across all age groups. If it works, Canada will boast an engaged population of athletes who are not threat-ened with burnout and who can transition between sports.

Way, LTAD’s Victoria-based project leader, says this is the first time a single, cohesive system for sport has been introduced at all federal, provincial and territorial levels. He also says LTAD is not just a high performance plan. “This is to improve the phys-ical literacy of the country, this is to improve lifelong participation.”

Blair Webster, executive director of the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association says his organization buys the philosophy behind LTAD. The problem with the existing sports structure “is that everyone wants to get that great kid at six, seven, eight years old and have them only play their own sport.”

Way uses the example of a tall 12-year-old basket-ball player to help explain what needs to change in the Canadian sports system. “The way our system has been operating is that the coach goes: ‘Well, you know what, if I put that tall kid under the basket, I have a better chance of winning.”

The shorter players will always dribble the ball to the athlete lurking beneath the basket, says Way. That pattern continues in high school. “Now they go to college and the tall kid is not the tall kid anymore because there’s a taller kid,” says Way, “and for all of his or her development that tall kid has never drib-bled the ball up the floor. So, they didn’t develop a whole bunch of basketball skills.”

the bionic athlete

- Blair WebsterOCAA executive director

We’ll have better athletes, better-trained athletes and better-prepared athletes.

By TESSIE SANCI

The long-term development model is changing the way athletes train from early childhood to adults

39SWEAT MAGAZINE

The long-term development model is changing the way athletes train from early childhood to adults

Way describes this as “systematic over-strategiz-ing” that results in “poor performance in the end be-cause these kids do not have the skills.”

Coming up with a better strategy doesn’t mean that it’s a slam dunk to implement.

The LTAD wagon was first rolled out 2005 and sports organizations are slowly picking up the reins. Some, like Ontario’s rugby and basketball associa-tions, are well on their way while the OCAA is still at the early stages of implementing the philosophy. Webster says the college sports body still has to come to grips with what it means for specific sport.

Webster says there are currently 4,000 varsity ath-letes and between 45,000 and 50,000 students in recreational college programs in Ontario. As a multi-sport organization, the OCAA has to develop an LTAD strategy for each sport and implement it at two different stages. The first “Training to Compete” follows athletes in their late teens while the second “Training to Win” follows those in their early twenties

For youngsters, the LTAD focus is on fundamental movement skills such as balance co-ordination and speed, and overall sport skills such as jumping and throwing.

As they progress, a young athlete can focus on one sport but must still be involved in others. It isn’t until the athletes are heading into college that they can focus solely on one sport.

However, that doesn’t mean the OCAA won’t make changes to its system. To thrash out a strategy, the OCAA is working closely with other provincial sports organizations. “We have a very good relationship with basketball, with soccer, with volleyball provincial organizations,” says Webster. “We’re already talking and they’re more developed in terms of their LTAD program so it’s just a matter of making sure what we’re doing aligns with what their philosophies are.”

In Ontario, the provincial ministry of health promo-tion and sport is monitoring the process. Webster says the province has not set a deadline for imple-mentation. “You just have to show progression” and that “you’re working towards implementing it within your organization. That’s where the government’s at right now,” he says.

Webster sees the LTAD as something that will help college sports. He is optimistic that as the process evolves, “we’ll have better athletes, better-trained athletes and better-prepared athletes.”

Active Start

FUNdamentals

Fitness and movement skills development as a FUN part of daily life

Learn all FUNdamental movement skills and build overall motor skills

Play many sports

Focus on the ABCs of Athleticism: ability, balance, coordination, and speed

Learn overall sport skills

Acquire sport skills that will be the cornerstone of athletic development

Play a variety of sports focusing on developing skills in three sports in particular

Learning to train

Build an endurance base, develop speed and strength towards the end of the stage, and further develop and consolidate sport

specific skills

Select two favourite sports based on predisposition

Training to train

Optimize fitness preparation and sport, individual, and

position specific skills and learn to compete

internationally

Training to compete

Podium Performances

Training to win

A smooth transition from an athlete’s competitve career to lifelong physical activity and

participation in sport

Active for life

M/F 0-6

M 6-9 F 6-8

M 9-12 F 8-11

M 12-16 F 11-15Growth-spurt dependent:

M 16-23 F 15-21Depending on sport:

M 19+/- F 18+/-Sport specific:

Any age

Provided by Citius Performance & Canadian Sport for Life

40 fall 2010

41SWEAT MAGAZINE

A brisk fall wind cuts across the perfectly manicured emerald turf. It’s a perfect night for soccer.

The Algonquin Thunder comes trotting on to the field to a raucous welcome from its crowd, some of whom have been waiting in the stands for upwards of an hour. There’s tension in the air as the Thunder’s cross-town rivals, the La Cité Coyotes, eye their opponents from the other side of the pitch, going over last-minute strategies in their heads. Within minutes, the game is on.

The home team is hungry; hungry for that elusive first win of the season in these familiar confines. Suddenly, two players jump to head the ball and come crashing down to the field with a thud. The referee runs over, stands at

attention and displays a red card. The home spectators are unrelenting; this does not bode well for their squad.

Algonquin College athletic director Ron Port says this sort of atmosphere is very much the norm around here.

“The fans are always incredible for these games,” he says through a smile during a break in play. “I don’t think you see this kind of support at just any college campus.”

A lot of that support, says Port, has to be credited to Thunder Yards, a $5 million soc-cer complex unlike any other in the Canadian college athletics system, complete with private dressing rooms, a physiotherapy centre and top-notch artificial turf. Since Algonquin played its first game there in September, 2005, the

Thunder have posted a record of 47-6-1 and have captured six straight OCAA champion-ships, along with one CCAA championship in 2007. They have fared so well at home that they only suffered their first loss at Thunder Yards on Sept. 25 of this year, and only by one goal.

Jimmy Zito, in his first year as head coach of the Thunder, says visiting teams quickly learn the ropes when they arrive.

“Most teams are pretty amazed when they walk in here,” he says, referring to the first class nature of the facility.

“They definitely don’t like it when they walk out though because there aren’t too many teams who come in here and win.”

Port is quick to point out that soccer has al-

The house thatThunder builtalgonquin college boasts new state of the art facili

ty

by ryan charkow

COURTESY Algonquin Athletics Department

42 fall 2010

ways been a popular sport at Algonquin but the program had suffered in the past due to the lack of a proper practice space.

“We felt we had a good program, but without a field on campus, we had to take things elsewhere, which definitely had an impact on our ros-ter,” he says. “Unless you really love the sport, you’re not coming out to Lansdowne Park at nine at night to practice for two hours.”

And, he says the new field has been a blessing for the school. “Every kid now has the chance to play,” he says.

Before the game, field attendant Ryan Bennison looks out at the pitch with the gaze of a proud father. He has been looking after the nuts and bolts of Thunder Yards since 2007 and it’s hard not to notice his pride seep through when he talks about outsiders’ responses to the field.

“I think people love it,” he says. “As soon as they step on the turf, it’s something different. They may be used to playing on uneven grass but here it’s not like that. We have a perfectly flat field and you get a true roll of the ball.”

Zito says the facility is invaluable to a coaching staff because it intro-duces a much-needed sense of consistency in practices and in working on in-game philosophy and strategy.

“There’s nothing like it in the whole city,” he says. “When you don’t need to worry about the conditions for a practice, you can get down to busi-nesses much faster and really have a chance to work on the finer points of the game.”

Along with being the home of the Thunder, the pitch also acts as the main field for the La Cité College’s Coyotes. On this day, however, Algon-quin is the home team and the stands are teeming with Thunder faithful. Emily Selst, 23, has been volunteering all season long to whip the crowd into a frenzy during home games. Her efforts really make the audience feel like they are at a professional soccer game.

“The spectators always feel like they’re making a difference,” she shouts over a clamor of cheers. “And in turn it really gets the players going on the field.”

Team announcer Vikta Paulo, who has been here since his first year at Algonquin in 2007 and has since graduated, says he hasn’t experienced anything like it at any other college.

“It’s hard not to come out and support such a stellar program,” he says.As the soccer season winds down and winter descends upon the Ot-

tawa area, it will soon be time to close down the field for another busy off-season. In late October, Bennison says 50 students will come in to erect a giant dome over the turf so Port can begin to rent out the facility through the winter months.

“When you pay $5 million for something, you definitely don’t want it sit-ting dormant for a good chunk of the year,” he says with a laugh. “I’ll have the field booked every weekend during the off-season and throughout most of the week too.”

Bennison says while putting up the dome is one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do, it definitely adds a cache to the field and shows stu-dents their extra fees are being put to good use.

The field is rented out each weekend to the Ottawa Fury, a local profes-sional development club that works closely with Algonquin and shares its coaching staff. During the week, the field is home to various intramural sports from indoor soccer to rugby and cricket.

“The [soccer] season is so short now, you start and it’s finished before you know it,” says Port. “So we welcome having activity here year round.”

In their quest for one home win this season, the Thunder comes up short against La Cité, albeit by one goal. The fans file out of the stands for one last time but are quick to give the team an ovation as it heads off the field. That’s the only reception you would expect from such a devoted group.

As far as the Thunder’s season goes this year, everyone involved real-izes they’re in a rebuilding stage, so it goes without saying there will be lean times.

“We’re a very young team and we’ve had a very injury-prone season but we’re starting to come together,” Zito says with optimism in his voice.

The team went out of the 2010 competition in the quarter finals —but with their tails up. With facilities like the Thunder Yards at their disposal, it’s not difficult to see why.

43SWEAT MAGAZINE

44 fall 2010

By ALICIA CONDARCURI

BATTER

The first year ever with a bunch of guys who don’t

really know each other, we did a really

good job.

44 fall 2010

- Joe JiminezHawks catcher

UP!

The catcher for the Humber Hawks

baseball team reclined on a chair in the Athletic

Centre clinic, icing his shoul-der the day before the big game.

The last practice of the season was over and the athletes were facing their first

ever Canadian Intercollegiate Baseball As-sociation [CIBA] finals against the unbeaten Durham Lords.

Catcher Joe Jiminez said nerves hadn’t gotten the best of the new team, otherwise known as “The Last-Minute Club.” Instead, the atmosphere at practise was loose: teammates cracking jokes, acting like the easy going “little family ready to play baseball” that they’d been for the past two

months since forming Humber College’s first ever baseball team.

Jiminez was adamant that staying mellow was Humber’s strategy going into the fi-nals. After all, he reassured, “we’ve proved that we can beat the previous champs (St Clair) and we’re going to prove this week-end how we can do that against an unbeat-en team, against adversity, against a team that’s beaten us however many times we’ve played them.”

But it wasn’t to be. The 18-year-old pro-gram at Durham helped give the Lords the edge they needed to take the title. For Hum-ber newbies though, reaching the finals in the first year is a victory no other team in the CIBA has ever accomplished, said Jiminez. Many in college sports hope it will spur the other colleges to review baseball as an option that could someday turn into an OCAA varsity league of its own.

That could soon be a reality, says Ken Bab-cock, athletic director at Durham College. Babcock did not expect his championship team to meet Humber in the finals, but he’s not surprised that the college has put together such a good program in a short period of time.

“Now, we’re only two teams shy of having the potential to offer an OCAA conference,” says Babcock, referencing the five teams minimum needed to start a varsity league. “And that’s exciting.”

Humber College assistant coach James DePoe thinks the addition of the sport in the OCAA would be “good for Ontario and good for baseball”.

DePoe laments the historic drain of skilled Ontario players to the baseball hungry United States, and increasingly to baseball-friendly British Columbia where, he notes, about half

45SWEAT MAGAZINE

of the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds’ ball players hail from Ontario. And most of them, he says, come from the Toronto region. Some have gone on to Major League Baseball training camps. UBC is the only Canadian school to play in the Na-tional Association of Intercollegiate Athletics [NAIA].

Why not Ontario too?“At the post secondary level, there’s not a competi-

tive enough level of baseball that’s going to keep the elite kids here, like in B.C.,” says DePoe.

And while the OCAA forming a formal league is a step in the right direction, there’s a long, long way to go. “It will take a while because you’re going to have to show how competitive the league is and bring the level of play up,” DePoe said.

Doing that requires recruiting experienced players and coaches, and that’s exactly what the Hawks found in coach Denny Berni. The ex minor league player coaches with the Etobicoke Rangers 18 and under midget organization and owns Pro Teach, a baseball teaching facility in Etobicoke. Humber play-ers get an advantage by using the facilities during the six-week season and throughout the winter, enjoying year-round practices that will help pave the way for a successful future.

For a while it was touch and go whether Humber would field a team, but when the last-minute call for talent went out last summer, selectors were faced with rich pickings. More than 90 players tried out for just 18 spots.

DePoe said he’s confident the new team will be good for Humber. “There will be a lot of attention paid and a lot of students will come here for baseball because of the location,” says DePoe.

As for finding two more teams to make the OCAA league fly, DePoe said it’s a reasonable goal.

“I know George Brown College had a team, but they folded so I’m not sure what the other colleges will do,” says DePoe. “London is a great baseball town so I think they’d be a natural fit for the OCAA [...] Hamilton also has a good tradition for baseball.”

London’s Fanshawe has been looking at baseball for a while, said manager of athletics Mike Lindsay.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Fanshawe Col-lege Athletics could field a very competitive team,” Linsday said in a statement. “London region is a hotbed for both (men’s baseball and women’s fast-ball) and there is significant interest from both cur-rent Fanshawe students and prospective students in both programs.”

Humber is living proof that it’s possible to field a competitive team right off the bat.

“I think there are bigger and better things to come with that program,” says Durham’s Babcock, “They’ve done all the right things, they look good, they’re in good shape, they bring in good people and it won’t be long before that program solidifies itself as a regular contender.”

Although the team finished second, they’re still proud.

“The first year ever with a bunch of guys you don’t really know and the amount of time you had to get ready and how short of a season it was, an 8 and 8 record is actually really good,” said catcher Jiminez. “So, .500 for guys who literally got thrown together in a couple weeks for a four week season, we did a really good job.”

UP!

45SWEAT MAGAZINE

46 fall 2010

Ask NHL afficionados what they recall about Bob Halkidis and most will say his willingness to drop the gloves.

“He played with a lot of heart, for sure, but he was actually a big fighter,” says Nick Malezis, a Greater Metro Hockey League (GMHL) referee, recalling the aggression of the former Toronto Maple Leaf and Detroit Red Wing.

A guy like that? He has to have a diet one step short of that of the cro-magnon man. Meat, meat and… more meat. Right?

Wrong. Halkidis will take tofu over tartare any day.

Halkidis decided to stop eating meat after he saw an advertisement on the news about the slaughter of cows.

“I’ve always been a healthy eater, and I always wanted to stay healthy,” he says. So now he is a vegan.

Cameron Blake is another vegan athlete-a runner. The 19-year-old from Richmond Hill has never eaten meat in his life. He was born a vegetarian and decided to go vegan about three years ago when he turned 16 – and he has never looked back.

“My body, in every way, functions so much better when I’m eating clean food. It has helped me in so many ways, and with my runs too,” he says.

“Any diet where it is plant based is associated with greater health. There are lower risks of cancer and heart disease, arthritis and inflammation, because you are having a fibre and

nutrient rich diet,” says Debra Basch, registered holistic nutritionist and certified personal trainer.

“There is nothing weird or freaky or dumb about a vegan diet,” says Basch. “Actually, we really try to push eating more of your food from plant-based sources.”

Basch says vegans take in, compared to meat eaters, “signifi-cantly higher dosages of fibre, potassium, magnesium, Vitamin B6 and folate.”

However, Basch says that with a vegan diet, you have to be very particular about what you are eating, ensuring that you are getting all of the proper nutrients.

“Lots of thought and prep has to go into the meals, but it’s okay,” she says. “I really endorse it. If you are mature enough to take this on and take care of your body, it might be fun.”

According to Kyle Byron, a sports nutrition expert and certified personal trainer, veganism is healthy if it is done correctly, though most people do not.

In order to be sure you are getting an appro-

priate amount of necessary foods on a vegan diet regimen Byron recommends this system:

“Put your hands together and make the shape of a bowl. In that, you would put dif-ferent coloured vegetables and leafy greens,” he says. “Make a fist. Three quarters of your fist will be legumes, like black beans, lentils, chickpeas, things like that. Now with your

How to live a healthy lifestyle on a vegan dietby malorie gilbert

Photo by MALORIE GILBERTCameron Blake, vegan athlete.

Recipe provided by Debra Basch

47SWEAT MAGAZINE

other hand make a fist, and a quarter of that is going to be a grain, like quinoa or rice. And then if you waggle your thumbs in the air, you make those nuts or seeds, and you’ve got a balanced meal.”

This meal, notes Byron, contains anywhere from 15-25 grams of protein.

Basch says the average woman requires a minimum of about 46 grams of protein per day; the average male, 56 grams. However, these numbers are just a guideline, as weight training, or an increased body weight will force those numbers to go up.

Basch cautions that failure to take in the re-quired amount of nutrients could cause the body to go into a catabolic state, which means muscle is being broken down to use for en-ergy. This can happen especially in endurance athletes – like runners – who do not take in adequate amounts of protein.

However, Basch says getting enough protein

is very easy to do.“You actually get a lot of protein in your

plant based foods,” she says. “Athletes that want to train hard, they’re going to have to make sure they’re taking in ad-equate amounts of those macro nutrients – then they will get their protein needs as well.”

“Macro nutrients are carbohydrates, proteins and fats,” says Basch. Also es-sential for the body are micro nutrients like vitamins and trace minerals, she says.Without these, Basch says, a vegan

could run the risk of becoming anemic.“Anemia doesn’t just happen when you don’t

get enough iron, you can be anemic in any of the minerals that you need,” she says. “So, if you’re eating a diet that is really high in plant-based calcium and iron, but you’re not eating foods in the right combinations, or your body has a problem with absorption, you could still become anemic.”

In order to make sure you are eating the correct combinations of food and preventing absorption issues, Basch recommends that vegans eat their plant-based source of iron at the same time as Vitamin C, so the body is then able to “unlock” the iron and make it absorbable.

For example, Basch says a vegan could eat strawberries, which contain Vitamin C, at the same time as cream of wheat breakfast cereal, which contains iron, to promote the greatest absorption of nutrients.

In terms of iron, “the easiest kind for the body

to absorb is called heme iron, but that is only found in animal sources,” Basch says.

For this reason, eating foods in the correct com-binations is extremely vital for a vegan athlete.

Besides iron, important nutrients that vegans must pay attention to are calcium, zinc and io-dine, says Basch. Athletes in particular must ensure they are getting Vitamin B12, as it helps to metabolize carbohydrates and fats used by the body for energy.

“The vitamin B12 that is found in tempeh, greens, legumes, things like that – it is a different form than our bodies actually use and need. So, B12, we tell vegans, they’ve got to supplement it.”

Basch suggests taking B12 in a liquid form, because it is the most absorbable.

Another benefit of going vegan to enhance training or performance, notes Basch, is that vegans take in much less unhealthy fats, since saturated fat is found in animal products. As a result, it is much easier for a vegan to maintain a low body weight.

“The fat in soy products, if you look at what a soy product has – whether it is tofu or liquid soy – it will have a lot of fat, but it’s healthy fat. Your body needs that,” says Basch.

Of course, veganism is a personal decision. But for those ready to embark on this lifestyle or for those who already follow a similar regi-men, when done correctly, veganism can be very beneficial to overall health.

“It’s just science,” says Blake. “If you’re eat-ing right and you’re eating well, your body will thank you for it.”

You actually get a lot

of

protein in your plant

based

foods. Athletes that w

ant

to train hard, they’re

going

to have to make sure t

hey’re

taking in adequate amou

nts of

those macro nutrients.

48 fall 2010

By LINDSAY BELFORD

- Jim BuckAthletic director

Loyalist

Community involvement is big to us and our athletes.

It’s a sea of blue and gold. The roar of the big city diehard fans hits you in the face like a blast of hot air. The smell of the freshly popped corn mixes uncomfortably with the slight sniff of stale sweat. Change the colours to blue and white as you move from a big school to a smaller and more remote Niagara College. What changes? Certainly not the enthusiasm.

From college athletics in the big city, to the rural Ontario colleges, the differences in the stands or on the field are few.

Steve McLaughlin, the current athletic direc-tor for Centennial College and former Athletic Director of Fleming College, agrees. He knows what it’s like at both a small rural campus and a large urban campus.

“I don’t see a difference in the calibre in a small institution versus a large one,” McLaugh-lin says.

McLaughlin does believe that the big schools rely on recruitment, while smaller schools rely on dedication.

“Smaller institutions do not recruit nearly as actively as the larger ones do smaller institu-tions rely more on walks ons,” McLaughlin says.

That’s counter-balanced by the dedication of not only the players but of the staff of a competitive athletic program. Given the travel-ling that smaller schools have to do to get to games and exhibition.

“Their [smaller institutions] travel budgets are astronomical... You not only have to have that dedicated student athlete but also a dedicated coaching staff,” McLaughlin says.

Ray Sarkis, director of athletics and recreation

at Niagara College agrees with McLaughlin.“It all depends what [the school’s] adminis-

tration is prepared to do to support their pro-grams,” Sarkis says.

But the differences between GTA schools and small rural schools are that small schools are more subtle. The colleges located in the smaller communities means being closer to the community that surrounds them.

Niagara receives requests from the commu-nity to come attend events or help out.

“We encourage our athletes to go out into the community, within reason,” Sarkis says.

Jim Buck, the athletic director for Loyalist College also encourages his athletes to inter-act with the community. Loyalist even encour-ages its athletes and students to go out and get involved in sports, like figure skating, rock climbing and hockey, which the community of-fers but Loyalist does not.

“Community involvement is big to us and our athletes... we have game nights where different groups come in to see our games and meet the athletes,” Buck says.

Some students are Big Brothers and Big Sis-ters within the Belleville community.

Melanie Rose, who works at a local pub in Belleville called the Winchester Arms notices a difference in business when school is in ses-sion at Loyalist.

“We find, in the summer, it’s slower and you see them coming back in September,” Rose says. “It’s mostly evenings. They like the atmo-

sphere because it’s a nice quiet pub, they can sit and chat.”

Niagara took part in fundraising for United Way through the first ever basketball game be-tween Brock University and Niagara. The game helped raise $4000.

“It wasn’t about the teams, it was more about the community,” Sarkis says.

The drawback for smaller schools is that they just don’t have the operating budget that the larger schools have. That’s due to the smaller student population, but smaller schools like Ni-agara are catching up.

“Our programs and numbers have grown immensely in the last four or five years. We’ve gone from 5400 students to 8000,” Sarkis says. This massive growth has caused Niagara College to expand drastically, putting millions of dollars into a new athletic centre and a new student centre among other things.

“It’s like building a brand new campus,” says Sarkis.

The enrolment rate for Loyalist College last year increased as well, rising 19.7 per cent for full time first-year students.

Last year in the 24 public colleges there were more than 102,000 students enrolled in first-year full-time programs.

The stands at small colleges, like Loyalist, are not quiet. They’re just as loud and full of antici-pation and excitement as the GTA colleges like Humber. They paint their faces and show their support for their athletes and their school, no matter what colours they are wearing.

COMMUNITY COLLEGES

COURTESY Terry Tingchaleum

48 fall 2010

49SWEAT MAGAZINE

Photos by GURPREET GHAG

by Johnna Ruoccothe wii fit: a hop, skip and a jump in the right direction

Video games are top of mind for many college students, but probably not when thinking about getting into shape.

The motion control concept of the Nintendo Wii, and now the Xbox Kinect and PlayStation Move, has brought the idea of fitness to main-stream video games. Whether these are just another level of interactive game or a viable fitness tool has been hotly debated.

They’re “exer-games” — a video game combined with physical move-ments to promote action says Dr. Brandon Vantorre, a London chiro-practor and certified strength and conditioning specialist.

The Wii Fit, he says, “offers physical benefits associated with increased muscular endurance, strength, flexibility, balance and co-ordination.”

But in terms of health-related fitness and weight loss, Vantorre says that only, “about one-third of the exercises in the game meet the recom-mended physical activitiy guideline of moderate-intensity and the actual number of gaming hours is directly related to energy expenditure.”

He says The American College of Sports Medicine [ACSM] recom-mends that adults who wanted to shed significant amounts of weight, participate in more than 250 minutes every week of moderate-intensity physical activity. To prevent significant weight gain, he says, ACSM rec-ommends that adults participate in at least 150 minutes every week of moderate intensity physical activity.

“The fun factor is there, but it doesn’t provide a high enough stimulus,” Vantorre claims.

EA Sports Active 2 is another fitness video game, with different ver-sions designed for the Wii, the Kinect and the Move.

Gerard Recio, an associate producer and a strength and conditioning specialist at the Vancouver location, where Electronic Arts [EA] Sports Active was developed, says “[The game] helps people achieve health benefits and weight loss goals.”

EA Sports Active was designed in consultation with certified per-sonal trainers, and is scheduled in a way where users won’t plateau, said Recio.

He points to a study that was commissioned by EA Sports Active and conducted by the University of Wisconsin. The study tested 16 physi-cally active adults aged 25 to 45 to determine the intensity and caloric expenditure of two of the pre-set workouts on EA Sports Active.

The study found that the two workouts tested met the ACSM guide-lines for an effective workout. These guidelines state that reaching an intensity between 64 and 94 per cent of maximal heart rate or 40 to 85 per cent of maximal oxygen consumption, as well as burning minimum of 200 to 300 calories per session, five days per week, are needed to maintain proper health and to aid in weight control.

Although the EA game might be useful as a supplement for athletes, it is not yet at a level to be used for training.

“The fact is that nothing’s going to beat one-on-one training sessions,” says Recio, “but [the game] breaks down barriers, it’s a cost-effective workout, and it might build motivation and esteem to try things outside the living room.”

And it could have longer term benefits as well.“It’s a gateway to a new lifestyle mashing gaming and fitness,” he says. Although there are traditional exercises, there are also mini-games to

combine fitness and fun, competition and play, says Recio. “That gaming element is engaging — you’re doing squats but you’re

not thinking about it. You’re concentrating on the activity in the game.”Jennifer Lau, a personal trainer for the Toronto-based personal training

company Fit Squad, has clients who also use the Wii Fit as a supple-ment.

“It is a good workout, but it depends on what you put in to it,” she says.“You can’t just shake the remote around, you have to put into it the

same effort as what you would put into a normal workout.”The gaming factor is motivating and it is convenient for users, says

Lau, “because they can do this from the comfort of their own home and no one’s watching them so they can sweat and scream as much as they want and not feel the pressure of an audience.”

50 fall 2010

“What makes golf different is that you hit your own ball across course with the objective of putting it in a hole,” says Karen Hewson, di-rector of membership and heritage services at Golf Canada. “As far as we can tell, it could have been influenced by many of the games that were played at the time,” she says.

There was a game played in Holland that had similar equipment, but was played on ice with the objective of striking the ball against a post using a metal club. Hewson says it is believed each golfer played his own ball.

The first golf balls – used in the unnamed Dutch forebear – were odd affairs, made of soggy feathers stuffed into wet leather bags. When dried, the feathers expanded in the ball and the leather contracted. Hewson says the ball would fly about 140 yards when walloped in its dry state. But any kind of moisture in the air would give it all the flight characteristics of a wet sock.

Which makes it all the more surprising that the leather-feather contraptions were able to make the flight from the frozen canals of Holland’s flatlands to verdant hillsides of Scotland – the birthplace of the modern game.

“The trade routes were fairly strong between Holland and Scotland, which carried the game over,” says Hewson. “It made more sense to play it on grass because they didn’t actually have ice.” Or at least they did – but the balls tended to stick on grassy slopes and slide on ice. The Scots, it seems, had figured out both friction and gravity.

“The earliest clubs we know of are from the late 18th century [with a narrow] wooden head and wooden shaft,” Hewson says. “We know that was played with through the middle of the 19th century and then, when they introduced a new style of ball, they began to change the shape of the head of the club into the modern, condensed, solid round head.”

The more heavy duty models also lent them-selves to mass manufacturing, unlike their more delicate, hand-crafted antecedents. Which, in turn, helped make the equipment more affordable.

Gutta Percha, the magical tree sap integral to the modern game, was discovered in 1850 in Malaysia, and was first used to insulate under-ground telegraph wires. It was discovered that when heated it could be molded into a ball and

used on the golf course. Dimples were intro-duced after the 1930s.

“That material was somewhat malleable, so the more they hit it the better it flew, and that’s really why they developed the dimples,” says Hewson. “They marked the ball so that it had some aerodynamic powers.”

Hewson says engineers are always looking for new materials and design that will improve a player’s game; and the advances in golf equipment are happening much faster.

“These were massive leaps and bounds when they went from feathers to the gutta per-cha, or the idea of having a central core,” says Hewson. “It’s much more incremental now – it’s little improvements over and over, which ultimately add up to a big improvement.

“There’s certainly an ongoing con-cern that courses are going to be out-driven, but I think the biggest influence in the change of equip-ment for the game is that it’s made it more accessible for more people,” Hewson says.

history lesson:

timeline

1895 1898

1930

tech 101

The United States Open is instituted

The term “birdie” is

coined at Atlantic

C.C. from “a birdie of

a hole”

by kyla sergejew

Steel shafts replace

hickory shafts

1991Big Bertha golf

club is launched,

crafted entirely

out of stainless

steel

Humber and Durham dominated at the 2010 PING/CCA golf national championship Oct. 15 in Kamloops, B.C., Humber taking the men’s team title and Durham the women’s. History was also made as all three individual medals were acquired by Humber golfers with David Lang stealing gold, Mark Hoffman sweeping silver, and Adrian Cord grabbing bronze.

50 fall 2010

51SWEAT MAGAZINE

Sometimes the technology is certainly going to make you a winner.

- Bob BreenCPGA golfer

Wood drivers were the standard up until just 20 years ago when Callaway Golf Company introduced a stainless steel driver called Big Bertha.

“That 20 years was really the first step in the evolution of clubs,” says Scott Goryl, communications manager at Callaway Golf Company in California.

“In the years that followed, steel drivers took over the game until golf engineers began employing lighter, exotic materials – eventually titanium, to improve performance characteristics and make club heads lighter so the shaft could be [longer] and faster club speeds led to faster and longer flight.”

Bob Breen, a Canadian Professional Golf-ers’ Association golfer who lives in Brampton has been playing professional golf for more than 50 years and has played in two U.S. Opens.

Breen plays Callaway iron, which he consid-ers the top clubs in the business.

“These are the clubs that fit my swing, fit my game: in weight and in size and in the loft. I feel confident that they work for me,” says Breen.

Today, about 90 per cent of the golf driver market is all-titanium drivers.

“The Ben Hogan club was a big club for years and years and years,” says Breen. “The Callaway club came on the scene and they made a real change in the game- and they try to better it all the time.

The newest material in golf club technology, Forged Composite, features over ten million high strength carbon fibers, or turbostratic fibers, per cubic inch – which creates a lighter and stronger material than titanium.

“It’s one-third the density of titanium, yet it features a greater load carrying capacity per unit mass and bending, which . . . allows (engineers) to do some pretty awesome things with the club,” says Goryl.

As the technology evolves, the sport has become the centre of some exotic partner-ships. Callaway, for example, has teamed up with Automobili Lamborghini in research and development of the product.

Goryl says Lamborghini recognized Cal-laway’s exploration of lighter, stronger, more precise materials and understood these characteristics could benefit their concept cars too.

“Because the lighter the body of the car, the more power they get out of the engine,” says Goryl. “That’s where the sort of natural collabora-tion began.”

The first golf club that will use this technology is the Diablo Octane driver. It contains forged composite in the crown – compared to all-titanium drivers it provides a greater distribution of mass in the club head, says Goryl.

“It’s exciting for us because typically the golf industry trails are super cars and aero-space in terms of leading materials, so this is really the first time we are neck and neck with these industries. That’s pretty exciting stuff,” says Goryl.

innovations in golf:

Forg

ed C

om

posi

teC

OU

RTE

SY

Cal

law

ay

Durham graduates and OCAA champions Will Mitchell and Tyler Martin qualify for the 2008 Canadian Professional Golf Tour

2007

51SWEAT MAGAZINE

52 fall 2010

53SWEAT MAGAZINE

OntarioCollegeAcademicAthletesmanaging studies on an

athlete’s schedule

By MELANIE KERR

College athletes have a challenge when it comes to balancing both school and sports, and sometimes it’s not so easy. For Hum-ber College’s badminton player Renee Yip, the idea of competing in a tournament and then racing home to pull an all-nighter for a late night study session is nothing out of the ordinary. With Re-nee’s double role as a student and an athlete she often finds herself studying in between her time on the court.

“I found myself struggling with school last year around nationals.It was during midterms and I had four midterms and had to change the days and ended up doing three in one day just to catch up,” says Yip, 19. “By the time I was doing my midterms my class was already beginning new lectures.”

The fitness and health promotion student says now that she’s in her second year playing at Humber, things are starting to get easier. “This semester I have class from eight to four and then badminton starts from five to seven. I also commute from Markham so I wake up at six, leave by seven, and usually don’t get home until eight thirty or nine at night.”

Although school and athletics share a top priority for Yip, her job is necessary too. “I also work part-time at a dental office so it’s hard to find time to study, but I need to make money for school.”

Pile all of this on and Yip says she has to really manage her time to be able to keep a social life and have time for her friends. “Having Fridays off of school really helps because during the day I’ll study and then at night I’m able to go out with friends, but that could change when tournaments start rolling in.”

Yip says Monique Haan, Humber’s athletic academic advisor, is very helpful and she’s thankful the school provides free tutoring to athletes.

Every school deals with varsity academics differently. “We have an academic monitoring program. The way it works is that every ath-lete, in the beginning of October, is given a monitoring form that they have to take to all of their teachers to fill out and the form is brought back to us,” says John Sharpe, senior varsity sports co-ordinator at Seneca College. “We do a 15 minute monitoring session where we go through each of their classes and see how they’re progress-ing, and we speak directly with the faculty to get feedback on their in-class work.”

54 fall 2010

The freshman academic sessions are all a half hour and can vary depend-ing on how big the team is and how many new rookie players have joined.

At Humber, athletes have until midterms to prove they are able to get their work done and achieve passing grades, says Haan. “Last year we had mandatory study hall for the first time. Not all of the coaches or athletes bought into it, but it’s important that the athletes know that if they aren’t meeting those requirements there will be disciplinary actions.”

If an athlete is failing any classes after midterms, they will be asked to come in for mandatory study hall and will be set up with a tutor.

Although mandatory study hall is not required for all athletes, some coaches have asked for it. “The basketball team does have mandatory study hall. It’s really all up to the coach and their preference. They come to the academic centre and sign in and then I report back to their coach to say ‘Hey, your player has been here,’ and then at the end of the week we tally it up and report back to the coach making sure all players have attended,” says Haan.

“When it comes to college sports, you are a student first and an athlete second,” says Haan.

At Humber the sport/study dilemma has been addressed in a more formal way. Humber’s varsity academic centre is located above the gym and looks like a regular classroom but is reserved for athletes. It is used before and after classes and during gaps between class to ensure that high scores are not only on the court but also in the grades.

“I meet with all of the freshman athletes for an academic session at the beginning of a semester. We want to make sure that they are starting off on the right foot and have their textbooks, OSAP money and tuition paid for,” says Haan.

Like Humber, Seneca does not have mandatory study sessions for their athletes but provides a room much like the Humber varsity aca-demic centre, desk space and extra computers where athletes can do group or individual work.

According to OCAA rules and regulations, students have to pass a minimum of three classes to be eligible for the next semester. “At Seneca if a student only passes two or three classes or anything below 50 per cent of their total course load they go into the monitoring program where they meet on a weekly basis with their varsity co-ordinator,” says Sharpe. she says that the ultimate goal is for the athlete to graduate and “if we’re not helping them proceed to that, what are we doing?”

Ryan Talsma, a former Redeemer University College student and vol-leyball player is now learning what it’s like to have mandatory study ses-sions. “At Redeemer there were tutors available, but that was for any student, not specifically for athletes,” he says.

Things have changed now that Talsma is attending Thompson Rivers University, in Kamloops B.C. “This year my volleyball team has a two hour study session once a week to ensure that the emphasis is also on academics and not just athletics.”

Talsma found it stressful to balance his schoolwork load with sched-uled games. “We had weekend trips near the end of the first semester. That was when a lot of papers were due for school and it was extremely hard to write a paper or research while on a weekend trip.”

Humber’s head basketball coach, Shawn Collins, says he meets with the athletes regularly to see they are organized both on and off the court. “I meet with them individually once a week to make sure they’re up to date with their school work.”

The mandatory study sessions began about three years ago when Col-lins was an assistant coach. “We started this because we were losing too many athletes come Christmas time,” he says.

The basketball team meets every Wednesday from six to seven thirty for a study session before practice. “We went on a weekend tournament to Montreal and had two study sessions while we were there. Any op-portunity we get as a team, we make sure everyone’s on track,” says Collins.

55SWEAT MAGAZINE

56 fall 2010

Tucked away in a modest and unsuspecting downtown neighbour-hood, The Toronto Backyard Axe Throwing League lies just beyond an old-fashioned ice cream parlor. On this particular evening, the shop is teeming with families sitting outside and enjoying what might be the last cone of the season.

As I get closer to axe league founder Matt Wilson’s house, the unmis-takable thud of metal hitting wood can be heard, followed immediately by the roar of the crowd. Someone must have made a great throw. The roar is a simultaneous mixture of cheering, heckling, and screaming. No one at the ice cream shop or strolling down the street seems to take notice; to them it’s just the sounds of a normal Tuesday night.

Stepping into Wilson’s backyard I finally see what all the commotion is about. The energy is palpable; one could almost reach out and touch the excitement in the air. Beyond that is the physical spectacle of seeing a massive axe throwing court set up in a residential backyard. Four huge targets are set up at the farthest end of two lawns. There is an eclectic sea of people, many adorned in red, green, or blue, B.A.T.L. [Back yard Axe Throwing League] t-shirts. An onlooker points me to a man in a red t-shirt, loudly orchestrating the set up and co-ordination of the evening’s matches, replacing the worn out wood, and ensuring everyone is having a good time, this is Matt Wilson.

“It started at a cottage with a couple of friends, just hanging out, and it was not really cottage season so there wasn’t a whole lot to do,” says Wilson.

“The first night in, one of the guys pulled out a hatchet and started throwing it at a tree, We started coming up with point systems and ways to get more points.”

Wilson had such a good time throwing axes that when he got back to Toronto he decided to share his newfound love.

“I told my roommate just how satisfying it was to throw an axe and he didn’t really believe me,” jokes Wilson.

“So I threw together some scrap wood, using duct tape, and leaned it against the wall and made him throw axes until he figured out how much fun it was.”

Wilson thought he could probably convince eight or ten friends to par-ticipate, and now four years later the league has grown to 60 players meeting over two nights during the week. There are also dozens of latercomers on a waiting list, says Wilson but at the moment the current facilities can’t reasonably contain everyone.

“We have to move out of the backyard. We expanded this year to a second night, we did it without checking with anybody. We just did it,” says Wilson.

“But it’s at the point now where I feel bad about the neighbours, who are really great, they’re really generous with us, they’re really patient with us, and I make sure we’re done at ten o’clock every night or nine-thirty if possible, just to be considerate, because I know we are loud.”

The boisterous noise of the crowd, combined with the blaring stereo and the thump of axes does make for a formidable sound, which leads me to

wonder if the commotion has ever attracted the attention of the law. “When we first started the cops came and told us it was illegal,” says

Wilson. But he did his homework and with the help of a lawyer and a business

savvy friend he found out that the league wasn’t in any way illegal.To ensure the future of the league, Wilson went down to city hall and

spent some time at the events department. He met with the organizers of Toronto events and asked them about all the logistics of what he was doing and whether or not they were in violation of any bylaws. The only issue they could come up with was that the boisterous crowd could break the city’s noise bylaws. Wilson says that at that point it really just depends on the police that show up.

“Some police show up and are like ‘that’s really cool, that’s really great, you’re obviously organized and doing something that’s legit,’ so they let us go,” says Wilson.

Any debate about the athleticism of the sport is moot the second you see how accurately and expertly league members are able to hurl their axes. Trapped in the woods, or in a post apocalyptic world where hu-mans are once again forced to hunt for meals, there is no doubt that this crew would be more than capable of taking down a deer from 30 paces.

For some players the accuracy is genetic. Five-time tournament win-ner Jari Salovaara’s forebears picked up the skills pillaging half of Europe a thousand years ago.

Backyard axe throwing league chops its way into

extreme sportsBy ANDREW SUTHERLAND

HATCHET MEN

Matt Wilson’s backyard Photo by ANDREW SUTHERLAND

57SWEAT MAGAZINE

“I’m a Finlander, I’m a Viking, I love swords and sharp things, it came naturally,” says Salovaara whose intimidating presence is over-shad-owed by his warmth and welcoming tone.

“I didn’t win the first season, but after that, I cleaned house. I won three in a row. Then two in a row.”

“Most people get into it pretty quickly,” says Christian “Wally” Walden in his thick Irish accent. Wally is one of the league’s better throwers, and says that it takes some people a while to figure it out.

“Everyone’s got their own technique and style, whatever works for you. Some people throw off their left, some people throw off their right foot, some people run through it. I almost run right through to the target. Some people stay completely still, it varies from person to person.”

As the creator of the game, Wilson would appear to have an unfair advantage, but he admits that after four years and 16 seasons, he’s only won once.

“I actually just won recently. When we started on another night, we started on Wednesday night and so the whole Wednesday night crew was 26 rookies and me, so I won that one,” says Wilson.

“I’ve been getting shit for it ever since. Well I’m not going to be there and run it and not throw, so now I’m the bad guy,” says Wilson.

“Now it’s the second season and all those guys are awesome now, so it’s not even a given for me anymore, the only win I ever got was on rookie night.”

As a crowd pleaser, Axe Throwing is a winner. “There’s energy from the crowd, you hear them chanting, and the heckling that goes on when someone is going for a perfect game, everyone is into it,” says Salovaara.

“When there’s a really close match you get a silence, and that means everyone is involved whether they are watching or playing.”

“It’s a really nice way to hang out with friends and you meet a mad cross-section of people here,” says B.A.T.L. regular Walden.

“Bartenders, plumbers, there’s even a guy who turns up in a suit with a

change of clothes on a Monday night. It’s all ages, all everything.”Walden even brought his girlfriend along to a few nights, and now she’s

an enthusiast competing right along beside him. “This is my third season,” says Sophie Ibbett, Wally’s girlfriend. “The girls have to try a lot harder to meet the expectations that the guys

have, but we’re getting there.“For me I was a little slower, this is the first season that I’ve actually

been doing decently. It took me about three seasons.”To add to the level of camaraderie, Wilson even created a credo that is

recited in unison at the beginning of every night.

“Everyone is into it, no one is embarrassed to say the oath, everyone is saying it with gusto,” says Salovaara.

“There’s no other sport out there like this one now,” says Salovaara. Thus far, the sport has received media coverage on CBC, MTV and in

VICE magazine. And with the prospect of a larger audience, Wilson has plans to move it out of the backyard, and into a bigger venue.

“All the ducks are in a row now legally,” he says.“So we can try to move it indoors where there is a legitimate space,

where I can do it four nights a week,” says Wilson. “You can look at videos and you can look at pictures online or what-

ever, but the minute you . . . throw an axe yourself and stick it in the wood, then you’re mine.”

remember primal man,who only had his hands.

Who forged in fire and steel,the tools to kill his meal.we honour him this day,and pray our axe to stay.

Here’s how the game works: Two players face off, they line up on embedded blocks roughly 15 feet away from the targets.

A bull’s-eye is five points, the middle ring is three points, and the outer ring is one point.

Each round is five axes; players throw three rounds of five axes in one match. Similar to tennis, players have to win two out of three rounds to win a match.

In the top corners of the targets are small green dots, about the size of the bottom of a beer bottle, called clutch shots, they are worth seven points and you can only go for those as your fifth axe of any one round.

In the case of a tie, things get interesting. If a person wins one round each and then ties in the third round, the tie breaker involves hurling a 27-inch axe, over the

head, from around 20 feet away. The round is like a sudden death shoot out in hockey.

Every season is eight weeks long, sev-en weeks of regular play, and the eighth week is a big double elimination tourna-ment.

Everybody throws four matches a week for seven weeks, so a player throws 28 matches in a regular season, at 2 points for a win, 1 point for an overtime loss, 0 points for a loss.

At the end of the seven weeks, all the stats are tallied, and the top 16 players out of 30 make the playoffs.

In tournament play you have to be eliminated twice to be out of the tournament. The whole thing takes about three hours, slightly longer than a normal night.

GAME RULES:

Photos by ANDREW SUTHERLAND

58 fall 2010

TOTALSCORE

Men's 2010 provincial championship

GOLD Mark HoffmanHumber

SILVER Adrian CordHumber

BRONZE Ryan CurranNiagara

GOLD HumberSILVER DurhamBRONZE Georgian

MEN’S TEAM MEN’S INDIVIDUAL

MEN &WOMEN’S GOLF

GOLD Kayleigh KraemerDurham

SILVER Tiffany AlbathDurham

BRONZE Jasmine PatonGeorgian

GOLD DurhamSILVER HumberBRONZE Georgian

WOMEN’S TEAM WOMEN’S INDIVIDUAL

Women's 2010 provincial championship

TOTALSCORE

+17+51+58

881915922

TOTALSCORE

-2

+2

+5

214

218

221

+13+94

+118

445526550

+3

+10

+45

219

226

261

TOTALSCORE

4326

LoyalistGeorgianSt. Lawrence KFleming L

PTSLWGPDIVISION 2 T

0126

2220

2418151

MEN’S RUGBY

6666

440

SenecaTrentFleming P

PTSLWGPDIVISION 1 EAST T

337

000

20191

777

742

MohawkHumberConestoga

PTSLWGPDIVISION 1 WEST T

035

000

332210

777

PROVINCIAL CHAMPIONSHIP

GOLD HumberSILVER MohawkBRONZE Seneca

GOLD LoyalistSILVER Georgian

DIVISION 1 DIVISION 2

HumberSenecaSt. Lawrence KFleming LLoyalist

WOMEN’S RUGBYPTSLWGP T

43111

01333

00000

1913665

44444

PROVINCIAL CHAMPIONSHIP

GOLD HumberSILVER Seneca

107622

DurhamSt. ClairSenecaMohawkConestoga

PTSLW

WOMEN’S FASTBALL

0168

10

20141244

PROVINCIAL CHAMPIONSHIP

GOLD DurhamSILVER St. Clair

BRONZE Mohawk

OCAASCOREBOARD FALL 2010

59SWEAT MAGAZINE

Men's 2010 provincial championship

GOLD Jason Smith, 26:01Conestoga

SILVER Clint Smith, 26:14Fanshawe

BRONZE Sean Sweeney, 26:19George Brown

GOLD Fanshawe, 1:49:17SILVER George Brown, 1:53:58BRONZE Flemming P, 1:55:44

MEN’S TEAM MEN’S INDIVIDUAL

MEN &WOMEN’S CROSS COUNTRY

GOLD Liliane Sparkes, 18:53Fanshawe

SILVER Richelle Moore, 18:58St. Lawrence K

BRONZE Erika Houde-Pearce, 19:04Fanshawe

GOLD Fanshawe, 1:16:41SILVER Humber, 1:23:29BRONZE Flemming P, 1:25:19

WOMEN’S TEAM WOMEN’S INDIVIDUAL

Women's 2010 provincial championship

655433210

SenecaLa CiteAlgonquinDurhamGeorge BrownCambrianSt. Lawrence KFleming PCentennial

HumberSheridanMohawkFanshaweRedeemerNiagaraConestogaSt. ClairLambton

PTSLWGPEAST T

888888888

023333456

210122222

201615131111852

PTSLWGPWEST T

664433110

888888888

011234458

213221320

201915141110650

MEN’S SOCCER

PROVINCIAL CHAMPIONSHIP

GOLD HumberSILVER SheridanBRONZE Seneca

865432200

AlgonquinSenecaDurhamFleming PCambrianLa CiteLoyalistCentennialSt. Lawrence K

HumberFanshaweConestogaMohawkNiagaraSheridanRedeemerSt. ClairLambton

PTSLWGPEAST T

021233667

002223021

24181714119621

PTSLWGPWEST T

864432210

988888888

002344448

122112230

25201413108860

WOMEN’S SOCCER

888888888

PROVINCIAL CHAMPIONSHIP

GOLD HumberSILVER Fanshawe

BRONZE Algonquin

60 fall 2010

It is my fourth year on Seneca’s soccer team and I have enjoyed every single year. The highlight of my career here was last year when we won the National championships in front of our home crowd.

This year however, has been a difficult year for the team. It is very tough going into a year as defending champions and having the opponents step up and play that much harder to beat you every game. It was something we had to really be ready for.

We have also gone through a lot of changes, adding many new faces to our squad and added to these challenges, was the team also having to deal with the unexpected passing of a team mate, Jason Arnone. He passed away early in the season. A couple of the guys on the team were close with him and his family and having to deal with something like that is just devastating. So as a team we had to come together very quickly and support each other in dealing with the situation. We decided to dedicate the season to Jason and do our best to fight as hard as we could every game because that’s what Jay would have done and that what he would have wanted us to do.

As a team we were somewhat disappointed with the outcome of the year because we felt we had the talent to go all the way, but at the same time we were very happy as well. We were pleased with the strength, emotionally and on the field, of our team. We fought hard and came out with a third place bronze medal finish in the Ontario finals, which is still a great accomplishment. Consdering we only lost one game all year, it is something to build on for next year, for sure.

We owe our success to the hard work and dedication of both the players and the coaches. The coaches put in so much work and speaking on behalf of the team we would like to say thank you for all you have done for us. I was also very happy and surprised with the OCAA awards that were handed out this year. I received All Canadian All-star and Ontario Player of the Year awards. This was not something I had in mind when I set out goals for myself, and the team, at the beginning of the season. As for now, I am looking forward to finishing up this school year by playing Extramural Men’s Hockey and possibly Men’s Indoor Soccer, as well as completing my studies of course. I would also like to wish the rest of the Seneca Sting Varsity teams good luck in their seasons.

Go Sting Go!

COACH'S CORNER

OFF THE BENCH

Many people think running is simple – just run in a straight line and keep going until you reach the finish line. However, after six seasons of coaching the Humber cross-country team I can’t stress how hard it really is. As coaches, we must constantly change the workout plan at least 7 times throughout the course of the season in order to accommodate individual athletes – there is no ‘one size fits all’ type of plan when it comes to this sport.

Throughout the season our workouts changed from fewer hills to more intervals and speed endurance to accommodate the type of courses the athletes would be running on at provincials and nationals. For each athlete the number of repeats or total distance would vary from workout to workout depending on how they felt that day, their injuries and if they had eaten before the practice. As coaches, we really needed to “know” our athletes full circle (academics, health history, nutrition, sleeping patterns, etc.) in order to determine what was best for our athletes that particular day.

The challenge for us coaches becomes easier with each passing week as we begin to understand our athletes needs better, and we felt that towards the end of the season our team dynamic became better and the workouts more focused. It took all of us to buy into the training plan that would result in a successful, healthy team finish, not as individuals but as a team. The following quote applies well to our team atmosphere and how we bonded as a group this past season - “When we become a part of anything, it becomes a part of us.” – David H. Fink

Kailen Murphy

Monique Haan

61SWEAT MAGAZINE

a brief look at

It was an historic season for Humber rugby, with both the men’s and women’s team taking gold in the provincial champiopnships.

The Hawks women’s team struck first by winning the first-ever Ontario championship, beating Seneca 15-7 in front of a home crowd November 13.

Humber’s Lesley Swan scored a pair of tries to lead the Hawks to victory.Humber finished the season with an undefeated record, winning seven

straight straight games against OCAA competition.The next day, the Hawks men’s team won its third provincial gold medal in

four years after beating Mohawk 25-13.“Anytime Mohawk and Humber play in a game, especially a final, it’s always

a very high impact game and very highly contested,” said Mohawk rugby head coach Alex Paris.

Five different Hawks scored a try in the win, payback for Humber after last year’s OCAA championship when Mohawk won 16-15 on a last-second try.

“I have never seen a game as ferocious as this in college rugby,” said Humber rugby head coach Carey French. “Even going into the semifinals it was clear that we had another gear to go up, and we were able to click into that gear in the final.”

For French, it may be his last title with the Hawks after he has announced that he is contemplating stepping down from the rugby team after nine years.

“In between now and February sometime, I will come to some kind of decision as to what the future holds for me,” said French. “There’s a time in any sport and any kind of relationship, especially if you’re the boss, when you should perhaps move on to something else and let the fresh blood come in or otherwise things get a little stale.”

Hawks soar in rugby finals

Compiled byJonathon Brodie & Gurpreet Ghag

Humber college’s men’s and women’s teams matched success this year by capturing bronze medals at Nationals.

The women’s team won its third place game by beating the defending champs, the Concordia Thunder, in a shootout for a 3-2 final.

The men’s team took home the same medal, but in a more convincing manner, beating the Concordia men’s squad 2-0.

Both teams advanced to the Nationals after the women beat Fanshawe and the men beat Sheridan for the OCAA championships on October 30th.

It is the first time in nine years that one school represented the OCAA at Nationals.

Humber did it last back in 2001.

Humber grabs GOOOAL-D

Ontario colleges faired well at the National Golf Championships by winning both men’s and women’s team titles.

On the women’s side, Durham College won it’s first ever title with a combined score of 468 strokes over three days, which was 25 better than second place University of British Columbia Okanagan.

On the men’s side it was Humber with a dominating three-day score of 848, which was 38 strokes better than second place University of Fraser Valley to capture its eighth title in the last ten years.

More impressively, Humber’s men’s team swept the medals for individual scores, something that has never been done before.

OCAA drives the competiton

One week after being named the OCAA’s inaugural golf coach of the year, Durham’s Michael Duggan was also awarded the CCAA’s first ever coach of the year award.

Duggan’s men’s and women’s golf squads have enjoyed major success this year in both team and individual competition.

At the Fleming Invitational, both men’s and women’s teams took first place, while taking first and second place individually in women’s and two players tying for second in the mens.

At Durham’s open tournament, the women took first place as a team with first and second place individually and a first place for the men’s side as well.

Duggan has been head coach at Durham for 12 seasons and during that time his team has participated in nine straight National championships.

The Duggan touch

Fanshawe College led the pack at the national cross-country championships that took first place at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B. during the November 13th weekend.

Two-time defending OCAA women’s individual champion Liliane Sparkes of Fanshawe finished the women’s five-kilometer individual race with a time of 18:13, trailing the leader by only 12 seconds to secure the third spot.

Fanshawe’s Clint Smith finished the eight-kilometer individual race with a time of 25:41 to bring a bronze medal back to London.

Two-time OCAA men’s individual champion Jason Smith of Conestoga College finished the race in fifth place.

Team rankings saw Fanshawe top the leader board in the women’s category, followed by Grant MacEwan University in second place and Red Deer College in third; both teams represent the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference.

Fanshawe’s men’s team also took home the gold, followed by CEGEP Sainte-Foy and College Ahuntsic; both teams hail from Quebec.

The OCAA was named the top conference for both the men and women races.

A total of 273 cross country runners competed in the event, representing 30 schools across Canada.

Fanshawe, ahead of the rest

FALL 2010

62 fall 2010

2 For 1 Marino Pizza Take Advantage of our Delivery Service 601 Upper James St., Unit 4 Hamilton , ON L9C 2Y7---------------------(905)574-2020

Afleet ExpressGeneral Courier Services1602-1000 Castle Hill CresOttawa, ON K2C 3L7-----------------------(613) 864-4170

Atlantic Council of Canada165 University Ave., Suite 701Toronto, ON M5H 3B8www.atlantic-council.ca------------------(416) 979-1875

Argos Carpets 1914 Merivale Rd.Nepean, ON K2L 1E8www.argoscarpets.ca----------------------(613) 226-2424

Babba Zee Car Sales & Auto RepairParts and Service16 Taber Rd.Etobicoke, ON M9W 3A5----------------((416) 745-0505

Barron PoultryThe Finest in Quality And Service7470 Essex County Rd. 18Armherstburg, ON N9V 2Y7-------------(519) 826-5252

Black Forest Inn255 King St. E.Hamilton, ON L8N 1B9www.blackforestinn.ca--------------------(905) 528-3558

Brampton Bowling Lanes 16-5 Pin lanes-Families, Ages 3 Yrs & up12 Beech St.Brampton, ON L6V 1V1--------------------(905) 459-2711

Brydon Auto Repair & CollisionGeneral Automotive Repair40 Brydon Dr.Etobicoke, ON M9W 4N2-----------------(416) 740-7662

Cameo Salon & Spawww.cameosalonspa.squarespace.com 386 Bank St. at James, Lower LevelOttawa, ON K2P 1Y4-----------------------(613) 231-4265

A & A Exhaust Systems480 Grays Rd.Hamilton, ON L8E 2Z4www.aexhaust.com-------------------------(905) 578-4303

Algoma Cabins & Motel1713 Queen St. E.Sault Ste. Marie, ON P6A 2G8www.algomacabins.com------------------(705) 256-8681

Arcturus Solutions 114 Banning Rd.Kanata, ON K2L 1C2www.arcturussolutions.com------------(613) 831-9686

Atomic Audio2740 Queensview Dr. #BOttawa, ON K2B 2A2www.atomicaudio.tv-----------------------(613) 820-0999

Barrie Southern Public Storage121 Big Bay Point Rd.Barrie, ON L4N 8M5www.southernstorage.net----------------(705) 727-9293

Bezco Trucking Inc.185 OakparkBrantford, ON N3T 5L8Email: bezco@lincsat.com---------------(519) 752-4999

Brian's Towing GOOD LUCK TO ALL COLLEGE ATHLETES!2304 Meighen Rd.Windsor , ON N8W 4B9--------------------(519) 977-5249

Breadman Pizza Pasta & Cafe500 Exmouth St, #1 , Northgate PlazaSarnia, ON N7T 5P4www.bread-man.ca-------------------------(519) 337-7162

Rx Pharmacie BAYSHORE PharmacyFAST, FRIENDLY SERVICE3029 Carling Ave., Ottawa, ON K2B 8E8FREE DELIVERY-----------------------------(613) 820-4907

Can East Pipeline Equipment Co. Ltdwww.caneastpipelineequipmentcoltd.com145 City View Dr.Rexdale, ON M9W 5B1---------------------(416) 247-7141

Carleton Technologies Inc.1-203 Colonnade Rd. S.Nepean, ON K2E 7K3www.carletontechnologies.ca----------------(613) 255-0283

CIBC Wood Gundy ( Peterborough)135 Charlotte St, P.O. Box 1711Peterborough, ON K9J 7X6www.woodgundy.com---------------------------(705) 740-2119

Crown Silverplating Co.Plate and repair silver articles & silverware3885 Chesswood Dr.North York, ON M3J 3R8------------------------(416) 636-2995

Custom Draperies- Blinds, Bedding & Home DecorIt's a shopper's heaven, filled with unique gifts.76 Pembroke St. W., Pembroke, ONwww.customdraperies.ca----------------------(613) 735-0370

Donato Photographer211 Country SideSudbury, ON P3E 6G3----------------------------------------------(705) 523-2841

Eagle Steel Inc1870 Gage Crt.Mississauga, ON L5S 1S1www.eaglesteelinc.ca----------------------------(905) 672-7010

Finnigan’s RoadhouseGreat Food - Good Times955 Pembroke St. E.Pembroke, ON K8A 3M3------------------------(613) 735-2333

Glendford Transmission Services19 George St.Barrie, ON L4N 2G5www.glenfordtransmission.ca----------------(705) 733-6161

Grace O'Malley's Pub1541 Merivale Rd. Unit HNepean, ON K2G 5W1www.gracies.ca -----------------------------------(613) 226-9695

High Seas Fish & ChipsFish and Chips, Burgers, Soulvlaki1086 Islington Ave.Etobicoke, ON M8Z 4R9-------------------------(416) 233-3154

Central Cycle965 King St. E.Hamilton, ON L8M 1C3www.centralcycle.ca-----------------------------(905) 522-8445

Cost U Less Tires AutoAutomotive, Repairs – Mechanical1140 Mrtingrove Rd.Etobicoke, ON M9W 4W1----------------------(416) 247-3821

Cruise Ship Centre 386 Sheppard Ave East, Unit 2 North York, ON M2N 3B7www.cruiseshipcenters.com/willowdale--(416) 226-6667

Delmar Restaurant1677 Dundas St.London, ON N5W 3C6---------------------------------------------(519) 451-6120

Don Cherry's Sports Grill1501 Seymour St.North Bay, ON P1B 8G4www.doncherrysnorthbay.ca------------------(705) 497-1611

Envy NailsManicures, Pedicures, Airbrush Design462 Hazeldean Rd.Stittsville, ON K2L 1V3--------------------------(613) 831-0833

Frontier Computing2221 Yonge Street, Suite 406Toronto, ON M4S 2B4www.frontiercomputing.on.ca----------------(416) 489-6690

Glow Hair Design Spa1405 Bank St.Ottawa, ON K1H 8N1www.glowhairspa.com--------------------------(613) 736-1311

Guildford Fish & ChipsFinest fish & chips store in town!34 Avondale Blvd.Brampton, ON L6T 1H3-------------------------(905) 789-8336

Hollywood Hair 18-20 King St. St. Catharines, N L2R 3H3www.hollywoodhair.ca--------------------------(905) 688-5143

House of LasagnaYou'll feel at home in our house!984 Merivale Rd.Ottawa, ON K1Z 6A4--------------------------(613) 728-9700

Jock Shield Driving School400 York St, # 105London, ON N6B 3N2www.jocksshieldsdrivingschool.com--(519) 432-2358

JM Accounting ServiceFull service accounting focusing on small business481 North Service Rd. W., Unit A5Oakville, ON L6M 2V6 -----------------------(905) 827-8528

Joe Feta's Greek Village209 Lake St.St. Catharines, ON L2N 4H2www.joefetas.ca -------------------------------(905) 646-3399

Kaya's Watch And Clock Shop Inc.2121 Carling Ave, Unit #205Ottawa, ON K2A 1H2www.kayaswatchandclock.com-----------(905)725-2787

Many Stitches Alterations Ltd.Alterations And Repairs140 Woodbridge Ave., #4Woodbridge, ON L4L 4K9-------------------(905) 264-1481

Nantais Sports Shop Ltd15% OFF with Student ID Card2020 Tecumseh Rd.Windsor, ON N9B 1V6------------------------(905) 252-5705

New Zealand & Australian Lamb Co.10 Shorncliffe Rd. #1Etobicoke, ON M9B 3S3www.nzlamb.ca---------------------------------(416) 231-5265

Northern Door ControlMaster LocksmithsP.O. Box 1414, Stn BSudbury, ON P3E 5K4------------------------(705) 688-6041

Ok Auto Body Ltd.Complete collision service142 West St.Brantford, ON N3T 3G3----------------------(519) 756-6371

Hugh Dolan Distrubutors LtdJanitorial Cleaning & Paper Products34 Grentfell Crescent, Nepeanwww.hughdolan.com-------------------------(613) 225-8822

Izzy's Dry Cleaning & LaundryWorld Class Cleaning At Neighborhood Prices!60 Meg DrLondon, ON N6E 3T6-------------------------(519) 681-1532

J.M. Schermerhom LtdSpecializing in Heating and Air Conditioning19 Grentfell Cres, Bay 1Nepean, ON K2G 0G3 ------------------------(613) 228-3597

Just BlindsShades that compliment your windows!6066 Kalar Rd.Niagra Falls, ON L2H 1T3-------------------(905) 371-1742

Kirkor Architects & Planners20 Martin Ross Ave.Toronto, ON M3j 2K8www.kirkoarchitects.com-------------------(416) 665-6060

Mount Vesuvio Ristorante91 George St. SBrampton, ON L6Y 1P4www.mtvesuviosristrorante.com---------(905) 459-0511

New Home Linx-PMA Brethour GroupServing the housing and development industry8980 Woodbine Ave.Markham, ON L3R 0J7-----------------------(905) 415-2720

Niagara Environmental Dynamics Ltd.976 Helena St.Fort Erie, ON L2A 6G2www.niagara-environmental.com--------(905) 871-8553

Nova Vita Domestic Violence Prevention59 Northpark St.Brantford, ON N3R 4J8www.novavita.org-----------------------------(519) 752-1005

Orkin PCO Services Incorporated442 Milen Rd. Unit 14Stoney Creek, ON L8E 6H2www.orkincanada.ca-------------------------(905) 384-9734

Ottawa Foyers Partage44 Eccles St., Ste 50Ottawa, ON K1R 6S4www.ottawafoyerspartage.ca------(613) 225-2126

Pet Value Better Pet Nutrition6474 Lundy's LaneNiagara Falls, ON L2G 1T6----------(905) 358-3717

Pita ShackLocal Delivery Available with a $10 min. Order239 Pembroke Street. EastPembroke, ON K8A 3J8--------------(613) 735-1818

Riverdale Financial GroupEZ Mortgages And Loans900 Albion Rd., Ste 201Toronto, ON M9V 1A5-----------------(416) 746-8000

Rollason Flowers Ltd.128 East Frederica St.Thunder Bay, ON P7E 3V5www.rollasonflowers.com-----------(807) 623-0513

Sandstone ImportsGift Shop & Retail Furniture421 Boundary Rd. E.Pembroke, ON K8A 6K9-------------(613) 732-1910

Rende Hair SalonBest Wishes to the Students and Faculty115 Welland AveSt. Catharines---------------------------(905) 988-9910

Ural’s Auto TechAutomotive Repairs30 Cleopatra Dr, Unit BNepean, ON K2G 0B3----------------(613) 321-1722

VMS Travel & Tours3410 Sheppard Ave. E., Unit 1AScarborough, ON M1T 3K4www.vmstravel.net--------------------(416) 293-5800

Wentworth Metal Recycling495 Wentworth St. N.Hamilton, ON L8L 5X1www.wentworthrecycling.com-----(905) 527-1707

Patronato Acli620 Clare Ave.Welland, ON L3R 3C1www.gianpierocognoli.com---------(905) 735-7729

Pembroke Book Store20% OFF with Student ID467 Pembroke St. W.Pembroke, ON K8A 5P1----------------(613) 735-715

Rexdale Home Child Care AgencyA licensed supervised home - Day care program30 Barrhead Cres, # 17Etobicoke, ON M9W 3Z7------------(416) 746-7101

Rock’s Custom Embroidery & ApparelSuperior In House Embroidery Services370 Nelson St.Sarnia, ON N7T 5K1-------------------(519) 337-6222

Shaan Curry House1489 Merivale Rd., Ste ENepean, ON K2E 5P3www.shaancurryhouse.com--------(613) 228-9759

Sarnia Truck Center402 Mcgregor Side RD RR 4Sarnia, ON N7T 7H5www.sarniatruck.com-----------------(519) 337-6944

The Printing House Ltd.447 Niagara St.Welland, ON L3C 1L6www.tph.ca-------------------------------(905) 732-2551

Victory Café581 Markham St.Toronto, ON M6G 2L7www.victorycafe.ca--------------------(416) 516-5787

Wacky Robbie’sGift Shop/Novelty47 Durham St.Sudbury, ON P3E 3M2---------------(705) 671-4713

Wilcorp Ceiling Fans117 Tycos Dr.Toronto, ON M6B 1W3www.wilcorp.com----------------------(800) 465-3267

Our thanks to the following sponsors who contributed to this publication...

63SWEAT MAGAZINE