Thursday, June 28, 2012

Women's Basketball Update

Hi Folks,

A little overdue for another basketball update.

I am very pleased to report that three of our players were named Academic All-Canadians for this past year (attaining at least an 80% average): Jenny Wright (1st year Science), Sydney Kernahan (3rd year Commerce) and Brittany Moore (Faculty of Education) – an outstanding accomplishment!

June 16th marked a special day as upwards of 20 basketball Alumni players (& coach) from the 1970s gathered in Kingston to tour the campus and don their basketball gear for a scrimmage on the hardwood. Current players served as tour guides and videographer for the event and very much enjoyed hearing the stories of their predecessors on the team.

Our 6 incoming rookies made the trip to Kingston in late May to acclimatize themselves to Kingston and their new teammates. The weekend proved very fruitful as players began to familiarize themselves with each other’s style of play and team bonds began to form. I am very much looking forward to working with this group starting in late August – they will be well worth watching come game time.

Looking ahead, details regarding the Alumni event on Saturday, September 22nd are progressing nicely. Each year, we would like to honour and recognize a specific group of student-athletes. For this year, we have selected the players, coaches, managers from the following five teams: 1980-81 to 1984-85. I am planning on sending a personal invitation to all members of those teams, however, our records are somewhat incomplete. If you have contact with anyone from those years, please let me know or pass along the information to them – thank you.

On Wednesday, June 27th, RMC announced the cancellation of their Men’s & Women’s Basketball programs effective immediately. This does impact our program in a fairly significant way. We no longer have a “partner” school, which means that our two-game weekends will be against teams that will only be playing one game (against us). This, of course, affects pre-game scouting (teams are only preparing for us on a weekend, while we have to prepare for two teams) and conditioning (our second game of the weekend will be against a team that rested (and possibly watched our game) the night before. Before RMC came into the league, we were the “single school” on a number of occasions, including both years we won the east championship – so I think we will manage.

That’s it for now – have a great summer!

Dave.