The Eyeopener — Top 10 Sports Issue

Wednesday, March 27, 2013 7SPORTS TOP 10

PHOTO: CHARLES VANEGAS

Managing EditorCharles Vanegas

PhotographyBrian Batista Bettencourt

Natalia BalcerzakMartin NombradoCharles Vanegas

Content EditorsCharles Vanegas

Shannon BaldwinSusana Gomez Bàez

Stine DanielleDasha Zolota

Natalia BalcerzakBrian Batista Bettencourt

Sarah Del Giallo

Creative ConsultantBrian Batista Bettencourt

ContributorsMonique Hutson

Michael Grace-DacostaHarlan Nemerofsky Shannon Baldwin

Alan HudesGabe Lee

Pamela JohnstonBruce LareginaJosh Beneteau

Emma PrestwichCharles Vanegas

Susana Gomez Bàez

DesignJessica Tsang

Charles Vanegas

SPORTS TOP 10 MASTHEAD

By Charles Vanegas

When I reflect on my four years at Ryerson, it’s largely defined by athletics.

In my first year, The Eyeopener broke the news that Ryerson had struck a deal with Loblaws to build a grocery store and new athletics centre at Maple Leaf Gardens, for-mer home of my childhood team. At the time I was working as a public address announcer for Rams games, so the thought that I’d be announcing at the legendary facil-ity was especially excited.

Little did I know how long I’d have to wait.

Construction kept being delayed, and my time at athletics simply ran its course. I started to wonder if I’d

ever get to enjoy the building that my student fees were paying for. But finally, last summer, the build-ing now known as the Mattamy Athletic Centre at the Gardens, opened, with the Prime Minister dropping a ceremonial puck.

This couldn’t have been a bet-ter year to be Sports Editor at The Eyeopener.

I was one of the first to skate on the new, elevated rink, and had the opportunity to be a part of so many other firsts as well.

It was amazing to see seasons kick off with packed crowds and enthusiasm. But eventually, with the exception of men’s basketball, the crowd-sizes shrunk.

I often heard from people “well, its great we spent all this money for all these empty seats.” And for a while I found it discouraging. Even with this beautiful building, people

still don’t care about sports at Ry-erson? But it’s a process.

Last April, shortly after being elected the new Sports ditor at The Eyeopener, I was at a friend’s party discussing the men’s basket-ball team’s run to the CIS National Championships.

We were interrupted by Luke Staniscia, a fifth-year senior cap-tain of the team.

“Wait, are you talking about us?”

“Yeah.”“I’ve never heard anyone talk

about CIS basketball at a party. Ever.”

And that’s why you have put things into perspective. People don’t suddenly care about teams; they need to have them grow on them. Most people don’t know that the all-time leader in CIS scoring is Boris Bakovic, a four-year starter

at Ryerson. In my first year, I’d say to people “Boris dropped 35 points last night,” and they’d say “who’s Boris?”

So while Ryerson didn’t pack ev-ery game in their first year at the MAC, the reality is, there’s a huge gulf in between where the univer-sity was before, in terms of athlet-ics, and where it is now. If only 300 people show up to a hockey game (out of 2,500 possible seats), that’s 300 more than were showing up in other years. And on weekday ri-valry games with U of T, Ryerson students do show up in droves.

Like the building, that “care” for athletics is still under construction. Who knows if we’ll ever become that school whose spirit is defined by its teams, but from the change I’ve been able to witness, year one in the MAC should only be seen as a success.

Under construction

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS.

IMMIGRATE TO C ANADA PERMANENTLY.The Canadian Experience Class program offers foreign graduates with Canadian work experience the opportunity to apply and stay in Canada permanently. Visit immigration.gc.ca/cec for more details and see if you’re eligible.

ÉTUDIANTS ÉTRANGERS.

IMMIGREZ EN PERMANENCE AU CANADA.Le programme de la catégorie de l’expérience canadienne offre aux diplômés étrangers ayant une expérience de travail au Canada la possibilité de faire une demande en vue d’habiter en permanence au Canada. Visitez le site immigration.gc.ca/cec pour en savoir plus et pour voir si vous êtes admissible.

PHOTO: NATALIA BALCERZAK

Wednesday, March 27, 20138 SPORTS TOP 10

Sweating from his palms up to his forehead, Andrew Buck looked ahead at the dismal amount of cam-era flashes which blinded his vision. Standing next to women’s hockey captain Kyla Thurston and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Buck faked a nervous smile as the ceremo-nial puck was dropped. A roar of claps followed and then Buck — in full uniform, holding his stick — ex-haled. The Mattamy Athletic Centre (MAC) was now officially open.

But as the season went on, ceremo-nies just like this would become more of a distraction than an amusement for Captain Buck and his teammates.

“There were lot of puck drops,” says fourth-year Buck. “The first five or six games, it seemed there was a puck drop every time.”

Buck says these distractions con-tributed to the Rams’ struggles dur-ing the first two months of the sea-son, as they slid from a 4-11 start at the start of December.

“There was a lot of stuff going on and hockey wasn’t what we were thinking about when we started go-ing to the rink early on in the sea-son,” he says.

The Rams had to get used to a much different facility than the for-mer George Bell Arena. The ice was different, the pucks at the MAC bounced off the boards differently, and even learning how to handle an 18-minute intermission (as opposed to the former 14 minute) was hard, says Buck.

“We didn’t get back to the way we played the year before until the middle of November. And then we

kind of regrouped and started focus-ing more on hockey, not worrying about all the outside stuff,” he says.

In the meantime, it was very frus-trating for the whole team, accord-ing to line-mate Jason McDonough.

“Personally I felt like we had the best team since I’ve been here, and to not have the record to support that at the start was disappointing.”

In the second intermission during a game against second-last placed Concordia on Nov. 24 — near the time of the turnaround — a furious Buck stormed into the locker room, his team trailing by three goals. As his teammates sat, Buck paced back and forth, enraged. He yelled at his team, saying they weren’t working together or trying hard enough.

“He didn’t even have to say any-thing, instead we all just picked up on it,” says McDonough.

The Rams would lose that game 4-0 after the final period but put in a much more complete effort.

But eventually the novelty of playing in the former Gardens wore off, the pre-game ceremonies ended, and the team began to mesh, ac-cording to Buck.

It was the start of the winning streak for the men’s hockey team who went 8-5 from December un-

til February, and eventually entered the first round of the playoffs in the eighth and final seed before losing to Concordia in consecutive games.

According to teammate Scott Brown, Buck was a big part of that.

“He’s not afraid to be a vocal captain and let everybody know what they’re doing wrong and what they’re doing right,” says Brown. “He’s always been one of our most vocal players, but this year he’s re-ally solidified himself.”

As head coach Graham Wise says, Buck just had innate leadership skills when he came to Ryerson, establish-ing himself as a leader the year the Rams eliminated University of To-ronto from the playoffs in the 2009-2010 campaign.

“When he comes to the rink he’s serious about getting the job done,” Wise says. “Off the ice, he’s the voice in our dressing room in that he has the ability to motivate our players.”

This past year, Buck poured in 18 points, a team second-best, in just 21 of the 28 games. He missed the last seven games after breaking his left collarbone on Jan. 18 against the RMC Paladins. Racing for a loose puck near the Rams bench, Buck remembers a Paladin player flying at him from his left side. Im-mediately, Buck’s left shoulder went right into the left stanchion and he fell on the ice.

“I thought he had a great year,” says Wise. “I think what makes him valuable is that he’s well-rounded. If it means grinding out pucks in the side corners, then he’ll do that. If it means penalty killing, if it means

power play or if it means putting a goal in, he’ll do that too.”

McDonough agrees.“Being a centreman, it’s always

good having a forward who knows where to be and I don’t really have to work that hard to find him.”

According to Wise, Buck’s line, featuring veterans Greg Payne and McDonough, were the go-to line throughout the season.

After Buck’s injury, in the first playoff games without their cap-tain, the Rams would lose to Uni-versité du Québec à Trois-Rivières.

“Anytime your captain goes down, that’s a little bit of unity that is lost... which is tough,” says Brown. “It’s always a difficult thing to not have your leader battle with you.”

Although his season was cut short, his teammates say his desire to win is always there and it’s what pulls everybody together.

“He leads by example — telling us when we’re out of line but also when we’ve been good,” says Brown. “With Buck you know what you’re going to get. He’s consistent every game, and it shows.”

‘He’s got the full package’

Buck finished second in team scoring with 18 points. PHOTO: CHARLES VANEGAS

Off the ice, he’s the voice in our dressing room in that he has the ability to motivate our players

By Harlan Nemerofsky


rectors coach. [Ryerson’s] not a Duke, it’s not a Stanford, even though they’re similar-sized institutions.

Eye: So it’s a cost-cutting measure.

IJ: Oh gosh yeah. I’m saving us a ton of money [by coaching.] But one of the things I’ve noticed by me coaching [is that] I get to see the things that need to happen. I get to experience the same pain and frustrations, or I’m seeing the

same opportunities [as other coaches], so I’m able to better administrate and put priorities where they need to be.

Eye: Is Ryerson going to bid to host the Wilson Cup again next year?

IJ: We’d like to do it again, but the caveat is, can we change the structure where the host team gets in? I don’t want to host another tournament where we’re not playing in it. Maybe

A chat with Ivan Joseph, director of athleticsEye: How do you manage being both athletic director and coach of the men’s soccer team?

IJ: You’ve got to have a good associ-ate athletic director and good senior leadership team. Because of our sport, most of our practices are at 6 p.m., so it doesn’t really keep me away a lot, plus the season’s so short. But from the world that I come from – a small, Divi-sion II school – many of the athletic di-

the Wilson Cup becomes a six-team tournament, and instead of a two-day event, it becomes a three-day event. So if the OUA decides to change it, we’ll definitely bid for it. We’re the best bas-ketball venue in the nation.

Eye: What if the format doesn’t change?

IJ: Then we’d only bid when we thought we had a legitimate shot to qualify. And that’s next year.

PHOTO: BRIAN BATISTA BETTENCOURT

One for AllBy Pamela Johnston

In her first year as a member of Ry-erson’s women’s volleyball team, Veronica Livingston surpassed all expectations, being named the OUA Rookie of the Year and a member of the CIS All-rookie team. But to the nursing student, the biggest surprise was that she got to play at all.

“I was expecting to be on the bench,” says Livingston. “[So] I was ecstatic that I even got to play.”

Rams head coach Dustin Reid is hesitant to give rookies playing time because he doesn’t want to give them too much responsibility too soon, but says Veronica earned her spot in the starting line-up.

“I love having players come in and grow first, but the bottom line is: the players that give us the best chance to win are going to be on the floor,” says Reid.

Livingston finished second on the team in kills (76), blocks (16.5) and points (98), but says all her ac-colades are a result of the team.

“It’s a team sport, so obviously I didn’t get [them] by myself,” she says. “It was the whole team be-hind me.”

The Rams went on a seven-game winning streak to end their 14-4 season, easily making the postsea-son. Livingston says the first-round playoff win over the McMaster Marauders, which sent the Rams through to the OUA Final Four, was the highlight of her rookie season.

“I’ve never played in any kind of environment like that,” she says. “Watching the boys’ teams going back and forth with their cheering, and the end [with] everyone com-ing on the court,” Livingston says. “That was great.”

For a team that has risen from the bottom (they were 1-18 in in just two seasons), the Rams al-ready have big expectations. And for Livingston, her goals — team goals — are simple.

“Getting back to the Final Four. Getting to the finals.”

Though he’s small, at just over 60 inches, his talent and eagerness are much bigger.

While Wilson didn’t take home this year’s Ontario Univeristy Eques-trian Association (OUEA) grand

prize, being nominated for the award has only expanded his fan base.

“He has the heart of a horse, [even though he’s] pint-sized,” says Leslie Lewis, a fifth-year arts and contem-porary studies student who rides with the Ryerson equestrian team.

No, Wilson is not a self-centered, hairy soccer captain. He’s a horse.

Wilson was the only equestrian club horse nominated for this year’s OUEA East Zone Horse of the Year Award.

The award was based on the number of points earned from more than 10 OUEA competitions at the club’s facility, Pause Awhile Equestrian Centre, during the year. Lewis, who has been leasing Wilson for the past five years, said while he only competed in four of them, he earned enough points from those four to be nominated.

“The riders who rode him all did very well, enough to bump him, point-wise, up enough,” she says.

Wilson is also ambitious. Lew-is says he was competing in the OUEA’s most advanced show jump-ing division, in which the jumps are almost as high as he is.

“To him, everything is a good idea,” she says.

“I say he’s the spokesperson for not judging a book by his cover.”

Wilson has become a team favou-rite for his big heart and willingness to take on a challenge.

“His colouring resembles a cow, so [we call him] the cow who jumps over the moon,” she says.

Although Wilson declined to speak with The Eyeopener, Lewis said he’s delighted by the nomina-tion.

“He loves the attention.” Laura Giffen owns a 12-year-old Swedish Warmblood named John Wayne.PHOTO: CHARLES VANEGAS

Just horsing around

With nine years of competitive rid-ing under her belt, then 15-year-old Laura Giffen fell off her coach’s pony.

“He cartwheeled over me and landed on top of me. He stood right on my chest,” she says, nonchalantly.

Fortunately for Giffen, she suf-fered no injuries from the incident, except a scratch on chest from the pony’s horseshoe. But falling isn’t a rare occurrence. In 2006, Giffen stopped her count of times she had fallen off at 80.

“After you’ve fallen off enough times … you accept the risk,” she says.

The second-year business man-agement student started training when she was five years old and be-gan riding competitively at six. She’s owned three horses in that time, two of which were show horses. Her childhood revolved around her hobby so much that when she was 13 and her parents had to travel for work, she was left with her training coach to live on a farm for a year.

“My dad was in I think either

California or Colorado at the time. So I’d see him once every six months and then my mom was working in Muskoka,” she says. “She’d come home some weekends, but mainly I was just living in Thornbury with my coach.”

Soon after her parents came back from their business trips, they got divorced and Giffen says she felt her horses were the only familial sup-port she had.

According to her, the time at the barn was not only “perfect for a 13-year-old” but also great training. Giffen says it taught her how to ride other people’s horses comfortably.

“I was riding minimum six horses a day, seven days a week,” she says. “I’ve been very fortunate. I think that’s why I can just easily catch-ride horses just because it doesn’t take me long to figure out how the horse goes.”

This helps her when competing for the Ryerson equestrian team since riders do not get to use their own horses.

Last week, Giffen placed third in the open division at the Ontario University Equestrian Association championship. But despite her suc-cess in the sport, her goal after grad-uation is to pursue brand marketing or real estate development.

By Susana Gómez Báez

Ryerson’s hairiest athlete

Wilson celebrating his nomination for horse of the year in his designer jean jacket.PHOTO: CHARLES VANEGAS

By Emma Prestwich

Wednesday, March 27, 201310 SPORTS TOP 10



Young & Gettin’ It By Monique Hutson

In the practices leading up to the Rams’ first-round playoff match against Queen’s, Cassandra “Ceejay” Nofuente was on crutches. And de-spite doctor’s instructions not to play for more than for 15 minutes on her torn right calf, the rookie played 33 — scoring 16 points in the 64-86 loss.

“I thought that because I made the effort to play with my injury, my team would be motivated and would want the win just as much,” says Nofuente.

While playing hurt is difficult, over the years, she’s been able to overcome even greater adversity through basket-ball. Never knowing her father, at the age of one, Nofuente was also aban-doned by her mother — being left in the care of her grandparents.

Without parents to look up to, No-fuente found solace in watching her two uncles whenever they were play-ing at the basketball court.

“I always followed them, even when they didn’t want me to,” No-fuente says. “Eventually they taught me how to dribble, to shoot, to do everything. They helped me get to this point, to get to university, and to get all the trophies in my room.”

By the time she was in the sixth grade, Nofuente was a certified baller.

“I don’t remember much,” she says of her first middle school game. “But I just know that the coach loved me. Everyone loved me.”

She went on to be named team MVP that season — much to the chagrin of one of her eighth-grade teammates.

“That girl wanted to punch me in my face,” Nofuente says, laughing.

She continued that success at the next level — making her high school squad as a freshman. In her senior year at Downsview Secondary School, the name Ceejay became synonymous with elite basketball, with the star point guard averaging 21 points, 12 rebounds and eight assists per game.

Family has always been a top prior-ity for Nofuente, so when she chose Ryerson over other recruiting schools — including Windsor, winners of the previous three national champi-onships — it was to be closer to her grandparents, who she says always gave her the support she needed on and off the court.

And though Nofuente’s mother wasn’t around in her youth, basket-ball has brought them a bit closer to-gether. Her mother even showed up to a few of her games this season.

“It’s nice to get to know her again,” says Nofuente. “I see her about once a week now, so I guess things change.”

One thing that’s never changed was Nofuente’s knack for success. After averaging 12.6 points. 6.3 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game in her first season with the Rams, she was named OUA East Rookie of the Year, a sec-ond-team OUA All-star, and a mem-ber of the CIS All-rookie team.

Being the centrepiece of your basketball program in your rookie season may be nervewracking for some, but for Ceejay Nofuente, it’s nothing. She’s been doing it since day one.

12 Wednesday, March 27, 2013SPORTS TOP 10

In just his first season as a Ryerson Ram, Robert Wojcik set himself apart as the go-to guy on the men’s volleyball team, becoming a league leader in major statistical categories and helping the team make the play-offs for the first time in five years.

And although Wojcik was born in Toronto, his journey to Ryerson began long before that — when his dad, Mariusz, and Ryerson’s head coach Mirek Porosa were teammates on one of the top Polish pro teams, Posnania Poznan, in the summer of 1983.

In the 1980s, volleyball players were given “special rights” that other citizens living in the communist coun-try didn’t have — like being given nice condos all to themselves, while ordinary citizens had to share small apartments with multiple families.

“The communist country pro-moted themselves through sports,” Porosa says. “We were the face of the communist parties.”

And while there were perks for athletes, it was a dangerous time to be in Poland, especially when the pro-union political party, the Solidar-ity, started challenging the commu-nist regime for the first time.

“The other citizens were stuck in the country and didn’t have regular freedom rights. The toughest part was when the Solidarity came to power; they blew up the whole city.


The army came out on the road, they blocked every intersection and there were tanks,” says Porosa. “We were still traveling to the matches during this and the stands were empty.”

With all of the political uncer-tainty and danger, Mariusz and his wife Barbara decided to flee Poland in 1987.

With the help of a family friend, they were able to leave for West Ger-many with an official letter saying they were attending a wedding.

“That was a pretty long wedding,” Mariusz says. “Because I didn’t go back to Poland for 20 years.”

Mariusz says it felt crazy at the be-cause they only had one suitcase and no plan.

He took jobs making chairs and de-livering pizza while Barbara worked at a massage parlour. But after their first year in Canada, they attended a half-year full-time English school for immigrants, in hopes to eventually become schoolteachers.

Meanwhile, Porosa moved to To-ronto in 1988, bringing his family shortly after so that his one-year-old daughter could get a special opera-tion on her knee. While working at a gas station to support himself, he be-gan coaching a local volleyball team.

Like most people in new places, both Porosa and Mariusz looked for some familiarity but found each other.

“We looked for contacts and that’s how we met [in Toronto],” Porosa says. “When my family arrived, we kept in touch and stayed together. We played some beach volleyball and

spent some time together.”When Robert was born in 1993,

the Wojciks and Porosas were still good friends, so Porosa met his fu-ture star a number of times when he was very young. But once Mirek was hired as Ryerson’s head coach, and Mariusz started teaching and coach-ing volleyball in Whitby in 1995, the families lost touch.

“Everyone went their own ways,” Porosa says. “[We] got jobs some-where else to pay the bills, so we didn’t touch base for a number of years.”

As a child, Wojcik’s parents knew he was going to be an athlete. When he was six, he started swimming be-cause he was too young for volleyball.

“That was my idea,” says Barbara. “His fingers were too soft and he couldn’t bounce the ball. But he was very tall and had big feet, which were like fins.”

It wasn’t until he was 11 that Wojcik finally started playing orga-nized volleyball. He joined the Dur-ham Attack house league team that his dad coached and began to learn his father’s sport.

“I always wanted him to play vol-leyball,” says Mariusz. “I wanted him to go down the same path that I did.”

Wojcik’s first few seasons were all about learning how to move the ball, something he found challeng-ing at first.

“I grew really fast and was re-ally uncoordinated,” Wojcik says. “I didn’t really know what was happen-ing [on the court]. I was awful, just God-awful.”

But he stuck to it and quickly be-gan to enjoy the game, and by the time he was 15, he had become a player to watch.

“I started feeling confident, I knew what was happening on the court and I could move the ball wherever I wanted,” Wojcik says. “That’s when people started notic-

ing me as a good player.”Wojcik also made many friends

while playing in Durham, includ-ing his current roommate and Rams teammate, Alex Dawson.

“He was my best friend growing up,” Dawson says. “We were all re-ally young and having a lot of fun.”

In 2006, Mariusz and Barbara di-vorced. Wojcik was 13 and about to enter high school, but used volley-ball to handle the situation the best he could. Even though he didn’t live with his dad anymore, he was still his coach, so they saw each other quite often.

The first time Porosa saw Wojcik play was when he was 16, while scouting players to come to Ryerson.

“He was tall and [could jump] higher than most of the guys that age,” Porosa says. “He was more

physical and at the same time, he [had] this killer instinct — so he re-ally [enjoyed] hitting the ball hard.”

While at a tournament in Vancou-ver, Porosa asked Mariusz if Wojcik would be interested in coming to Ryerson.

“I told Mirek at [that] time that I would like Robert to play for him,” Mariusz says. “But we [had] two years to go and I didn’t know what Robert would think.”

Porosa continued to pursue Wojcik for the next two years, until he was getting ready to graduate and had to decide where to go next.

“I left this decision completely to Robert,” says Mariusz.

So Wojcik fielded offers from dif-ferent volleyball programs across Canada, trying to find the right fit.

“It’s not like the States where there are big bucks. You would get a cou-ple shirts and they would pay your tuition,” Wojcik says. “But it was al-ways a real ego boost for me.”

He narrowed it down to Ryerson and the University of Alberta, but eventually chose the latter. Alberta is consistently one of the top volleyball schools in the country — qualifying for the CIS National Championships in 20 of the previous 21 seasons— and Wojcik wanted the instant chance to win.

“My ego kind of wanted me to go there,” he says.

The team reached the CIS final, but lost to Queen’s. Wojcik had enjoyed himself so much that he already paid a deposit for first and last-month’s rent for a house with a friend and left some of his things out west when he went home to Whitby in the summer.

But late in the summer, Barbara became sick. Instantly, Wojcik’s deci-sion changed — he wanted to be clos-er to his family and play for Ryerson.

“In August I was like, ‘I just can’t go back.’ Mostly because of my mom,” says Wojcik. “I’m a lot hap-pier here, I feel a lot more confident here and I wanted to stay closer to home.”

When Wojcik committed to Ryer-son, Porosa was overjoyed.

“It was like Christmas — it was magical,” Porosa says. “Any time you get information about a player of his calibre coming, that’s a very excit-ing time for the program.”

Wojcik completed the deal with Ryerson on Aug. 22 and was sched-uled to miss the entire season, as CIS rules require transfer students to sit out a year. But he successfully ap-pealed to the CIS and ended up only missing the team’s first two regular season games.

And reunited with his childhood friend, Dawson was able to help Wojcik adjust to playing with new teammates.

“The team accepted him with open arms,” Dawson says. “After all, he’s a pretty good player.”

And no one welcomed him more than team leader Luka Milosevic. Considered the team’s best option at the right-side hitter position, Mi-losevic moved to middle blocker — where he eventually became an OUA all-star — to make room for Wojcik at his natural position.

“As a volleyball player that is real-ly tough to take in and do, so I really respect that a lot,” says Wojcik. “He [has] given up a lot for the team.”

And with the fifth-year Milosevic graduating, Wojcik’s role will become even more prominent than before.

“We expect him to make a kill for us and help to win tight games— that is what makes him the face of the program,” says Porosa.

And his parents couldn’t be hap-pier for what Wojcik is doing at Ry-erson. “I am proud of his achievements,” says Barbara. “And I get to see him play more.”

Communist [countries] promoted themselves through sports. We were the face

His fingers were too soft and he couldn’t bounce the ball. But he was very tall and had big feet, which were like fins

I wanted him to go down the same path that I did

14 Wednesday, March 27, 2013SPORTS

The Ryerson men’s hockey team is moving to the west division of On-tario University Athletics (OUA), as part of a realignment plan for the 2013-14 season.

The realignment was necessary due to the addition of the Laurentian Voyageurs as the league’s 20th team. The Rams will become the only Ry-erson varsity team to compete in the west, joining several new divisional opponents including Brock, Guelph, Laurier, Waterloo, Western, Windsor and Lakehead.

Rams head coach Graham Wise says the move will benefit his team by dramatically reducing travel with fewer overnight road trips.

“We’ll be able to play some more mid-week games,” Wise said, refer-ring to Ryerson’s close proximity to most of the teams in the west. “Those schools, we would probably host on a Thursday night.”

The realignment will also unite all three Toronto universities in the same group for the first time since 1986. The Rams will be joined by their downtown rivals, the University of Toronto Varsity Blues, in switching to the west division, where the York Lions already play.

“It’s big to have U of T (move with us),” said Rams captain An-drew Buck. “Since I got here, that’s the precedent you set, and that’s who you want to beat, no matter what…there’s a pretty heated rivalry there. Hopefully we can develop that same kind of hatred and rivalry for York.”

The rest of the realignment sees the Laurentian moving to the East divi-sion, alongside Central Ontario rival Nipissing, while Oshawa-based Uni-versity of Ontario Institute of Tech-nology (UOIT) moves from west to east, where it is more geographically suited.

The regular season schedule will still consist of 28 games, but the for-mat will be more balanced, much like the one used in OUA basketball. Teams will play two games against their own division and one game versus each squad in the other con-ference in a full cross-over. The top eight teams out of 10 in both divi-sions will qualify for the playoffs.

Despite leaving tough east oppo-nents behind in McGill and defend-ing champion Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR) – who have eliminated the Rams in the opening round of the post-season the last two years – the team doesn’t expect the competition to get any easier.

“Now you’ve got to set your mind on Western and Lakehead, and you’ve got to get to that level,” said Buck, of two of the top three teams in the west over the last four seasons. “There’s no team in the whole league that you [should] think is [easily] beatable.”

By Alan Hudes

Daniel Lombardi and the men’s hockey team are moving to the OUA West division. PHOTO: CHARLES VANEGAS

Rams head West

15Wednesday, March 27, 2013 SPORTS TOP 10

It doesn’t get better than BestEver since his junior year of high school, Aaron Best had always kept Ryerson as a potential option for where he wanted to play college basketball — even before coach Roy Rana spoke with him. For Best, choosing a team was about more than prestige: He wanted familiarity and to go somewhere that would give him a chance to make a difference.

“[At] Ryerson I had the chance to contribute and... change the cul-ture of what Ryerson basketball is, “Best says. “I wanted to be a part of something big like that.”

Best got the number nine rank-ing for high school prospects by North Pole Hoops and MVP hon-

ours in his senior year at Eastern Commerce Collegiate — the same school his current coach Rana used to coach at. The high ranking gave him a lot of praise but also a lot of pressure, since every game was like playing for his career.

“You feel like you’re always on edge,” Kevin Jeffers, Best’s high school coach, says. “You feel like every shot is for [your] scholarship.”

Best received attention from various NCAA and CIS schools — coaches from the universities of Windsor, Waterloo, Pennsylvania, Eastern Kentucky and Ryerson all came knocking on his door. For three months, Best had campus vis-

its and coach meetings but he says he was surprisingly calm about it and never let the pressure of decid-ing on a school get to him.

“I had my mom with me, so I was pretty relaxed through the whole process,” Best says. “She just want-ed me to go where I’d be happy.”

Since Best did have the option to go to an Ivy League school, the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania, he had con-sidered moving to the United States. But he says that it would have tak-en the perfect situation for him to move there and he wasn’t able to find that, whereas at Ryerson, he knew he could be happy.

“I had a relationship with the

coach and I had a relationship with the players on the team, before I even came,” Best says. “It was an easy decision for me.”

For a lot of his friends and family, Best says his decision to go to Ry-erson came as a huge surprise. He says he was able to see the potential of Ryerson basketball and the Mat-tamy Athletic Centre, but it took them some time to understand.

“If you look around, we probably have one of the best facilities in the country at the university level,” Best says. “It was pretty tough for them to see at the time, but now it’s pretty ob-vious as to why [I came to Ryerson].”

While Best had to miss a third of

his first season due to injury, he led the Rams in scoring in the playoffs during their run to nationals and made the OUA Rookie All-Star team.

Now as a second-year business management student, the shooting guard averaged 15 points and seven rebounds per game and made the OUA All-Star first team this season.

“I remember my high school coach telling me that ‘if you’re going to go somewhere, make sure it’s a good sit-uation for you,’” Best says. “I found a good situation and I’m here.”

Best says that when he thinks about it, he honestly can’t imagine playing for any other team, so he has no regrets in choosing the Rams.

By Michael Grace-Dacosta

PHOTO: BRIAn BATISTA BeTTencOuRT

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After shocking the #2-ranked team in the nation at the 2012 OUA Final

Four and earning a trip to the CIS National Championships, expectations

were raised for the Ryerson men’s basketball team in 2012-13. But de-

spite improvements to the roster, a 10-0 start, and impressive wins

over elite teams, their efforts ultimately fell short, as they failed to

even reach the OUA Final Four — which was hosted at the Mattamy

Athletic Centre. Still stinging from defeat, team captain and star point

guard Jahmal Jones is looking to make up for disappointments and

make good on his championship aspirations. And for the face of Ryer-

son Athletics — now, more than ever — the pressure is on.

All Eyes onJahmal Jones

By Charles Vanegas


With less than 10 seconds left, the Rams had the ball in Ottawa’s zone, trailing 70-72. The play was simple — Jahmal Jones, the team’s leader and best playmaker, was to find an open spot, and make a play. Seeing nothing, he drove through the mid-dle. But the tight Gee-Gees defence eliminated any chance of him mak-ing a lay-up, so he passed the ball behind him, to Bjorn Michaelsen. Michaelsen jumped, trying to find an open man, but there was no one to pass to. So he landed.

Travel. Loss of possession. Game over.

“I just told him after the game ‘I’m sorry I put you in that posi-tion,’” says Jones.

Jones doesn’t have to take the blame. He could attribute the loss to injuries, or the referees’ obses-sion with calling so many offensive fouls in such an important game, or even the play calling. He could point towards his 15 points on 6-for-9 shooting in the first half and say he was the main reason they were even in that game at halftime (which isn’t incorrect.) But he doesn’t. He doesn’t have that luxury.

Outside of friends or classmates, the one varsity athlete that you’ve probably heard of is Jahmal Jones. Since his rookie year, he’s been the go-to-guy, leading the team in points and assists and being named an OUA All-star in every season. And when you go to Rams basket-ball games, you’ll see a giant por-trait of Jones on the wall.

“My closest teammates — my brothers, my friends, my fam-ily, even coaches, former coaches, they always try to remind me ‘that you’re the face,’” says Jones. “To me, it’s just pictures.”

After being a heavily sought-af-ter recruit in his senior year of high school — when he played the en-tire season with a torn meniscus — Jones came to Ryerson after head coach Roy Rana sold him on the new facility being constructed, and the idea of building a champion-ship contender.

“The biggest challenge was to somehow try to put Ryerson on the map as a basketball powerhouse. That was the biggest thing for me,” he says. “You always want to accept the challenge of going somewhere and building it, where you can put your stamp, put your name on it. When you leave here, you want to be able to say you did something that was never accom-plished before.”

And in just three years, Jones can say he’s done something that’s never been accomplished. After the team advanced to the CIS National Championships for just the second time in team history in 2012, the team got its first win at that level, with a 84-80 victory over Concor-dia.

But with great results come great expectations, and many expected the team — which was only losing

one starter — to return to the na-tional tournament in 2013.

And while the team finished with their best record in 12 years, the playoff loss to Ottawa meant they wouldn’t get to play in the OUA Fi-nal Four — which they were host-ing at their new home, the Mat-tamy Athletic Centre.

While Jones says it was difficult to see Windsor, Lakehead and Ot-tawa — three teams Ryerson had beaten during the season — play-ing for the Wilson Cup, it was even worse knowing he had disappoint-ed people who were counting on them being there.

“You feel like you let a lot of people down, who had it planned,

who bought tickets in advance. It’s hard to walk around, because you know people were wishing we were [playing],” says Jones. “It just hurt because it was here, and we know that had we made it, how much support we would have gotten — it

would’ve been a zoo.”As the point guard, Jones is re-

lied upon to lead the offence and control the tempo of the game. It’ll

also be Jones’ responsibility as a team captain to lead them through the pain of defeat, and on to the next level. Rana says Jones best leads by example.

“He’s very committed to devel-oping as a player. He’ll do all the things that he’s asked as far as being in the weightroom. He’s re-sponsible, he’s on time, he’s always in the gym doing extra work,” says Rana. “So if you’re an athlete, and he’s your leader, you know you sort of have to mirror his behaviour.

But Jones is still improving in other aspects of his leadership. A self-admitted introvert, Jones isn’t always the most vocal guy on the floor, something his coach says he

needs to improve.“It’s everything from readings to

conversations,” says Rana. “[But]Jahmal’s very different, so it’s go-ing to be a very different type of leadership.”

And while Jones knows the pres-sure is on him, it’s something he accepts.

“I’m never satisfied with any-thing I do. Basketball, school, video games, whatever. That’s how I am as a person,” says Jones. “If there is [additional pressure on me], I’ll accept it. I want to be the best at anything I do [but] I know there’s going to be times when I fail. [But] pressure is something I put on myself.”

I want to be the best at everything I do [but] I know there’s going to be times when I fail



PHOTO: MARTIN NOMBRADO

Why so serious? By Shannon BaldwinWhile universities like to stress that the “student” part of student-athlete comes first, that’s rarely the case for the ones actually playing. OUA All-star Chelsea Briscoe puts her sport first, and is serious about leading the women’s volleyball program to where it’s never been.

Chelsea Briscoe was never supposed to be a Ram. But three weeks before the deadline to apply elsewhere, Lau-rier — the school she had committed to — suddenly announced they were getting rid of their volleyball team. And for Briscoe, not playing volley-ball simply wasn’t an option. So she chose Ryerson.

“I would say to my coach that school came first, but if you ask any of the athletes, well no, my sport comes first,” Briscoe says. “Even as a team we know when school comes first and when volleyball comes first.”

This season, Chelsea became a first-team OUA All-star while leading the team to a 14-4 record — the best in team history. While they lost both the semi-final and bronze medal match at the OUA Final Four, Briscoe says it was good for the team to experience what it’s like to play under a lot of pressure and it was also a good men-tal lesson about awareness for herself.

She says she felt “like such an idiot” after the bronze medal match against the University of Toronto be-cause she had watched the ball hit the ground and not even realized that it was the game point.

“[I thought] ‘oh my god, that was me who messed up that last point’ or a miscommunication that involved me… we lost.”

Briscoe says as a team, they make an effort not to point fingers, but she should have known it was the game point, and that’s an aspect she needs

to pay more attention to.Briscoe is serious when she plays —

not jumping around or cheering like some of the other girls on the team do.

“For the most part I’m not very cheery, more so in our warm up. I give high-fives and stuff, I’ll do that — I’m all for high-fives — but I need to get in the zone because if I’m not in the zone before the game, then it’s going to take six points to get there,” she says. “Once I get going, I’m good.”

Briscoe says that even though she’s so intense on the court, she’s actually having a lot of fun while she plays, and sometimes she does join in the noise — when she feels it’s warranted.

When the women’s team surpassed their goal of winning three or four games in the first semester long before it was over (they actually won their first five), Briscoe says this added a lot of energy to the team and may have been part of the reason why she was cheering more. She says that having a lot of the same girls on the team that all started at the same time helped be-cause they already knew how to work with each other and build on the pre-vious year.

“We have the talent but last year we didn’t do a good job picking teams apart,” Briscoe says. “ [Now] we make teams hate themselves be-cause we don’t let them do the things they want to do and eventually they break down.”She says her coach Dustin Reid has

even suggested she use her calm de-meanor to help her teammates when they begin to stress and let the pres-sure get to them.

“There’s really only one incident this year where I had to grab someone and say, ‘You need to calm down,’” she says. “If one person’s down it’s like a plague and everyone’s in the dumps.”When they don’t play to their best and allow other teams to win, Briscoe says Reid will run drills that could go anywhere from half an hour to sev-eral — depending on their hustle.

After the team seemed to give up during a loss in her first year, Reid told the girls that if they wanted to stay on the team, they had to show up at 4 a.m. to do boards — a drill in which you wrap a towel around a two-by-four and have to push it around the gym with your hands.

“It’s only you on the court and Dustin’s throwing balls everywhere,” she says. “I cried that night because I was so dead and didn’t want to be there.”

Briscoe says having to do that drill was the first time she had ever seen Reid like that since he’s not a “yell-in-your-face kind of guy,” but it worked. “It’s kind of become a tradition,” Briscoe says. “It was a punishment, but now it’s a reminder that we’re not going to be that team [that gives up.]”

While they lost in straight sets to both the Universities of Ottawa and Toronto at the Final Four, simply

making it there was a big step for the team that will remain full intact for next season.

“I think next season is going to be very different… we’re not at the bot-tom of the barrel anymore so we’ll definitely have to fight because teams

are going to expect us to play better,” Briscoe says. “But I think that if we get [back to the Final Four,] the expe-rience will help us know how to react in certain situations and know that it’s another game, but a really impor-tant game at the same time.”



Levy in the Game

Ryerson President Sheldon Levy converses with members of the men’s basketball team after their Oct. 20 tilt with Wake Forest.


One of my favourite memories this year is dropping in to the Mat-tamy Athletic Centre and seeing three hundred kids in pink t-shirts dancing the roof off the building. The Rams were hosting ‘Team Up Against Bullying’ with the Toronto Police Service and Loblaw, and stu-dents from six inner-city schools joined us on campus.

It was a proud moment know-ing we have a very special place. The spectacular grand opening at the Gardens was an unforgettable event and a highlight of our year. We can boast the only NHL Origi-nal Six arena that still has ice, and a facility chosen by ESPN for their list of “Top 10 Most Historic North American Stadiums.”

But for me the magic of the build-ing is how it turned many teams into one team. In competition, on the po-dium, in community service, Ryerson has an identity everyone knows. This year, more than ever before, people

talked about win-loss records over coffee. The ticket line-up at the box office went all the way back to the front door, as the broader community took ownership of the Rams as “our team.”

If you consider the value of Var-sity sports as relationships — among student-athletes with parents and family, alumni and fans, the univer-sity and city, sponsors and support-ers – then this year has seen Rams currency appreciate many times over. The strength of their achieve-ments and their pride at represent-ing Ryerson have made this year a rising star.

Earlier this month during March Break, thousands of prospective stu-dents and their families descended on the university for ‘Discover Ry-erson’ day. The agenda started at the MAC, and there were Rams di-recting traffic, conducting tours and answering questions. I overheard someone ask “didn’t this used to be…?”

Of course, for us all, the answer is “This is our house now.”

By Sheldon Levy

Joanna Kolbe captured her third straight gold medal at the OUA Championships.PHOTO: NATALIA BALCERZAK

All Gold EverythingLast week, Joanna Kolbe was awarded the H.H. Kerr award as the Ryerson Female Athlete of the Year. It was just another feather in the cap for the fencer, who won her third straight OUA gold medal in the individual epee competition.

And while Kolbe is a member of

the Canadian National team, she isn’t so sure she’d be interested in competing in the 2016 Olympics in Rio De Janeiro.

“It’s so expensive [to train for an Olympics],” Kolbe says. “And they (the Canada Olympic Com-mittee) don’t give any funding, so it’s very difficult.”

She also says the competition is much more difficult at the in-

By Charles Vanegas ternational level, as European nations — such as her native Po-land — have much better fencing programs.

For now, the third-year com-puter science student wants to focus on her studies, saying that she once missed a month and a half of school to compete in in-ternational competition — some-thing she wouldn’t do again.

Last call: final words from some top seniorsGreg Payne, Hockey

I was never the biggest student but hockey definitely helped. It almost made me look forward to school.My biggest moment would have been against UOIT last year... I tied it up with like 10 seconds left in the third the puck just came to me and I put it in and then like a minute into overtime, I stepped on the ice and I let a slapshot go through the goalie’s five-hole. And that was a huge thing for me because I’d never had a hat trick before in OUA, and just to help the team get those two points was massive and just felt amazing.

Parvinder Sachdeva, Badminton

When you join a team here at Ry-erson, you become part of a family, not just a team. These are people that’ll stand behind you no matter what. That was the case with our team. I could always go to them for academic advice, they were always supportive, they always cared about each other. So what happens is that you feel part of something bigger than your-self. And that really motivates you to go ahead in life and do things even beyond the court because you know you have this big family behind you.

Afeworki Gebrekerestos, Basketball

My plan in the summer was to accept an internship and just work full-time and focus on school, but just my teammates and [the] importance they put on me being on the team — that was just a big deal to me and I felt like I couldn’t let my family down.

That game where we got the whole community behind us in

Waterloo, Ram-packed with all our fans, all our supporters. With everything we had worked for, that was definitely my best moment.

20 Wednesday, March 27, 2013SportS top 10

No matter how great he or she might’ve been at their sport, there comes a point when every athlete must be humanized. Perhaps the body breaks down, thus rendering it unable to compete against those who are younger, faster and better; or as in Markus Molder’s case, his years of eligibility to play at the uni-versity level have run out. That day is one that no athlete trains for.

When asked about how he felt as his final games in a Ryerson Rams’ soccer jersey drew closer, Molder took several seconds in silence to collect his thoughts before respond-ing with this:

“Five years is a long time. I’ve been playing soccer for Ryerson year after year after year, and it was great, but this time it felt like it was time to move on. I had to write the next chapter of my life,” Molder says.

“You go from being the most important person at the school, the guy who gets athletic therapy provided to him every day and everyone bends over backwards for, but the second that whistle blew and you can’t play one more game for Ryerson… you’re done, you’re not valuable anymore and you become a normal person. So that’s how I felt approaching my last couple games.”

The centre back’s last year with the Rams was his best one in terms of individual recognition. He was named an Ontario University Ath-letics (OUA) first team all-star for the third time in five years and became only the second player in Ryerson history to be named to the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) all-Canadian team.

However, the season ended in familiar fashion for the Rams, being eliminated in extra time of the OUA quarter finals 6-3 by the Carleton Ravens. It was the third straight year the Rams were elimi-nated from the postseason in extra time.

“When the whistle blew in Ot-tawa, I was like damn… I would’ve liked it to end at nationals. But then I felt like now I get the chance to start my life as a part of the real world. I’m not a student anymore, I’m not a boy playing soccer, I get

to be a man now,” he says.A fair amount of athletes struggle

to adapt to a world that is no longer so black and white, one that isn’t dictated by wins and losses. Luckily for Molder, he was well prepared

by his coach of four years and ath-letic director of Ryerson University, Dr. Ivan Joseph.

Before coming to Ryerson,

Molder considered himself a strik-er. When Ivan Joseph took over the role of head coach of the men’s team in Molder’s second year, he began to morph Molder’s game as well as his approach to it.

“Once Ivan came in, he put me in the midfield, he told me I run like an idiot with his head cut off, so he shifted me to centre defen-

sive-mid, and that still didn’t work so then he put me at centre-back,” Molder says.

“He has some really natural skill sets,” Joseph says of Molder. “I knew that he could be an all

star in that position. You look for certain tendencies and he had them all in spades. He was a domi-nant physical specimen, he was a

hard tackler, he liked doing head balls, he liked to be in charge, he’s a natural leader, he’s got charisma people will follow.

“I think if anything I put him in the right position to succeed, but he worked hard for it.”

But Molder gave his coach a little more credit than that.

“He taught me to love the posi-tion. As a player Ivan turned me into someone who loves the tacti-cal side of the game. I used to love the playground aspect of the game, Ivan taught me to love the school aspect as well.”

Joseph not only bestowed his knowledge of strategy and tech-nique upon Molder, he also passed along his passion for teaching the game.

In his down time, Molder coaches a youth soccer club in the Yonge and Finch area and he plans to attend teachers’ college, hop-ing to one day replicate the path that Joseph and his father (who is a professor at Ryerson) blazed be-fore him.

Although his playing time at Ry-erson has come to an end, Joseph says Rams alumni are always be a part of the program’s family, and Molder is no different.

“Whether that’s coming to games, whether that’s sending us recruits, whether that’s through coaching, he’ll always be connect-ed – if we’ve done our job right as a department, and [I as] a coach,” says Joseph.

As my interview with Molder drew to a close, he took a picture of a painting of the quad, the epicen-ter of Ryerson campus, that hangs on the second floor of the Rogers Communication Centre with his Blackberry. My final question to him was why.

“I (expletive) love Ryerson. My mom used to be a doctor here, my dad teaches here. Everyone I know here has been connected to the soc-cer program and my playing days somehow,” he says. “Everyone wants to be the best in their field. It feels good, but I’d trade all my personal awards for another game for the Rams.”

But for Molder and Ryerson’s back four, it is time for both to move on.

Markus Molder, Ryerson soccer team’s centre-back, is graduating and leaving the Rams after five years with the team.PHOTO: NATALIA BALCERZAK

By Gabe Lee

When Rams grow up and move onMarkus Molder has played his last game with the Rams. But it’s tough to leave athletics when it’s a part of your identity

I used to love the playground aspect of the game, Ivan taught me to love the school aspect as well

Everyone wants to be the best in their field... but I’d trade all my personal awards for another game for the rams

I felt like now I get the chance to start my life as a part of the real world. I’m not a student anymore,

I’m not a boy playing soccer, I get to be a man now

The Eyeopener — Top 10 Sports Issue

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