Sunday, 8 March 2020

Veterans power Huskies to second Bronze Baby win

U Sports national women’s basketball title returns to U of S

Sabine Dukate hit eight three-pointers for the Huskies.
    The veterans ensured the University of Saskatchewan Huskies women’s basketball team would reach the ultimate U Sports high.
    On Sunday at TD Place in Ottawa, Ont., the Huskies road huge performances from fifth-year guard Sabine Dukate, fourth-year post Summer Masikewich and fourth-year guard Libby Epoch to post a convincing 82-64 victory over the Brock University Badgers in the title game of the U Sports elite-eight women’s basketball national championship tournament.
    The win marked the second time the Huskies captured the Bronze Baby as U Sports national champions with the first title coming in 2016 with an 85-71 victory over the Ryerson University Rams in Fredericton, N.B.
    Way back in 2016, Dukate was a rookie who made her presence known. The Latvian point-guard hit four shots from three-point range recording 22 points, seven rebounds, seven assists and three steals in the first U Sports national title victory over the Rams.
    On Sunday as a fifth-year veteran, Dukate had one of those amazing outings that you start to wonder how much the Huskies will miss her.
    She nailed 8-of-12 shots from three-point range and led the Huskies in scoring with 24 points. 
Summer Masikewich scored 20 points for the Huskies.
    Dukate also collected three rebounds, three assists and one steal to be named the tournament MVP and a tournament all-star.
    Dukate, guard Megan Ahlstrom and forward Vera Crooks all graduate from the Huskies program as U Sports national champions.
    Masikewich, who was a first-team all-Canadian all-star, posted 20 points, nine rebounds, three assists and one steal.
    Epoch was on the court for almost the entire game. She collected nine points, nine rebounds that were all defensive, seven assists and two steals in her contribution to the winning effort.
    Third-year guard Katriana Philipenko came off the bench to chip in 11 points to the Huskies cause.
    Forward Samantha Keltos topped the Badgers with 21 points.
    The Huskies once again got to this point under the guidance of head coach Lisa Thomaidis, who you could make a strong argument is the best coach in any sport in Canada. She is also the head coach of Canada’s senior national women’s basketball team.
Libby Epoch was dynamic for the Huskies.
    Under Thomaidis, the Huskies have always hit the court with a driven, hard working, fun and likeable group. The personalities of the Huskies players that have played for Thomaidis are so warm and welcoming that you can’t help but cheer for them.
    When the Huskies host the Canada West championship game, the team’s alums flock back to the Physical Activity Complex in big numbers like on Feb. 28, when the Huskies downed the University of Alberta Pandas 62-51 in the conference title game.
    This season, the Huskies posted a 30-2 overall record that includes an 18-2 mark in the regular season and a 6-0 record in the post-season.
    At the U Sports championship tournament, the Huskies downed the Carleton University Ravens 73-59 in a quarter-final contest on Thursday and thumped the Universite Laval Rouge et Or 76-57 in a semifinal on Saturday.
    The Huskies women’s basketball team under Thomaidis leadership has always been great ambassadors representing the U of S and Saskatoon as a city on the national stage. They are a treasure to be taken to heart.
    Once again, you have to love it when good people become national champions, and the Huskies deserve to stand on the U Sports mountaintop.

Bears, Stars to collide in first round of SFMAAAHL playoffs

Jessie Herner, left, and Brooklyn Anderson will mean business in playoffs.
    It seems like the Prince Albert Northern Bears and the Saskatoon Stars are destined to meet in the Saskatchewan Female Midget AAA Hockey League playoffs.
    After the results came down from the final day of SFMAAAHL regular season play on Sunday, a Bears versus Stars match up in the post-season was cemented for the fourth time in six years.
    The clubs closed the regular season playing each other at the Art Hauser Centre in Prince Albert on Sunday. The Stars were cemented into fifth place in the SFMAAAHL standings regardless of the outcome of that clash.
    The Bears had an opportunity to vault into third place with a regulation win, which would negate a match up with the Stars.
    In the SFMAAAHL, teams receive three points in the standings for regulation wins, two points for extra time wins and one point for extra time setbacks.
    The Bears got an early first period goal from 16-year-old forward Paris Oleksyn to go ahead 1-0. For the longest time, it appeared Oleksyn’s tally would be the only goal of the contest.
    With 53.7 seconds remaining in the third period, 16-year-old defender Bridget Rezansoff netted the equalizer for the Stars to force a 1-1 tie.
    Knowing they needed a regulation win to finish higher in the standings, the Bears pulled their goalie for an extra attacker looking for the go-ahead marker. The 1-1 tie held up as the third period expired causing the game to go to overtime.
    With their goalie back between the piles for the extra session, the Bears scored in overtime to claim a 2-1 victory off a wraparound goal by captain Brooklyn Anderson.
The Bears have won four straight games.
    Dani Day made 22 saves to pick up the win in goal for the Bears, who will host the Esso Cup female midget AAA national championship tournament from April 19 to 25. Kaitlyn Cadrain turned away 34 shots to take the extra time setback in goal for the Stars.
    Prince Albert won all five head-to-head regular season meetings with Saskatoon.
    The win was the fourth straight for the Bears, who finished the regular season with a 15-13-2 record. They had an identical record with the Notre Dame Hounds, but the Hounds took third place having won all five head-to-head regular season meetings with the Bears.
    The Stars finished with a 12-14-4 regular season record. Saskatoon has won the last two straight SFMAAAHL title, but Stars roster and coaching staff underwent a massive turnover at the end of last season.
    Unlike past years when SFMAAAHL playoff series were contested in best-of-five formats, all SFMAAAHL post-season series will be contested in best-of-three formats starting this season.
    The Bears will have home ice advantage for a best-of-three SFMAAAHL quarter-final series against the Stars. The dates and times of those games are still to be announced.

CBC Sports vows commitment to gender balanced coverage

    CBC Sports likely raised an eyebrow or two over the weekend.
    In an online story released on the CBC Sports website on Friday, the network said it was committing to gender balanced coverage across all its platforms. The hope of the network is to give more exposure to women’s sports, which are extremely under-covered in Canada.
    In 2016, the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity released a study regarding the connection between women and sport in Canada. A couple of facts revolved around media coverage.
    An analysis was done on Canada’s primary national sports networks in English and French in 2014. The study said only four per cent of the coverage on those networks was dedicated to women’s sports and over half of that number was dedicated to coverage of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
    A study was done on the Saturday sports section front page in two of Canada’s highest circulated national newspapers from June 2008 to May 2010 and June 2013 to May 2015. Over those time frames, 5.1 per cent of the coverage was dedicated to women’s sports.
    Of course, that study only considered a small sampling size of the print industry.
    It can be argued since that time the coverage of women’s sports in Canada has decreased thanks to massive cuts in the mainstream media, which has often targeted sports departments. Sports coverage seems to get more and more focused on just the NHL, which causes everything else in the sports scene to be out of luck.
    What CBC is trying to do isn’t unheard of. Way back when I covered sports for the University of Regina student newspaper, the Carillon, in the late 1990s and a short time into 2000, that outlet followed a policy of dedicating the same amount articles and space to men’s and women’s sports.
    If I remember correctly, that was tried in a number of university student media outlets.
    In Regina, the University of Regina Cougars women’s basketball team rose to new heights of popularity due the massive amounts of coverage they received from all media outlets in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Cougars won the U Sports national title in 2000-01.
    CBC’s venture is a noble one, and it is highly unlikely the rest of Canada’s mainstream media outlets will follow that venture. Some in those outlets will likely note CBC didn’t talk specifics of how it will reach this idealistic hope.
    With Sunday having been International Women’s Day, here is hoping CBC’s initiative finds traction and creates change for the better. The announcement story from CBC Sports can be found by clicking right here.

    If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.
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