Stingers down resilient Warriors 3-1 in U Sports semifinal

Concordia advances to third straight U Sports title game

Zoe Thibault (#7) scored the Stingers first goal on Saturday.

For a third straight year, the Concordia University Stingers will play for a U Sports women’s hockey title.

On Saturday at Merlis Belsher Place, the Stingers, who are the Reseau du Sport Etudiant du Quebec champions, outlasted a resilient University of Waterloo Warriors squad 3-1 in the first of two semifinals at the U Sports Women’s Hockey Championship tournament. The Warriors, who are the OUA champions, road a 37 save performance from netminder Mikayla Schnarr to stay in the game.

The Warriors were down 2-1 and went on the power play with 2:39 remaining in the third when Stingers defender Camille Richard was penalized for body checking. With 1:20 remaining in the third, Stingers third-year right-winger Jessymaude Drapeau took the puck from a pair of Warriors players in the centre ice zone and jetted down the right wing into the Waterloo zone.

Drapeau cut across the front of the Warriors net, put on a deke and tucked home a short-handed goal that sealed the 3-1 victory for the Stingers in a contest played before 647 spectators.

With the win, the Stingers advance to the gold medal final to face the sixth seeded University of Toronto Varsity Blues on Sunday at 6 p.m. at Merlis. The Stingers are making their third straight appearance in the U Sports championship game. The Stingers captured the U Sports title in 2022 downing the Nipissing University Lakers 4-0 in the event’s final, when the tournament was held in Charlottetown, P.E.I.

The Stingers faithful cheers on their team on Saturday.

Last year, the Stingers fell 4-3 in overtime in the U Sports title game to the Mount Royal University Cougars, when the tournament was held in Montreal.

With Saturday’s setback to the Stingers, the Warriors will play in tournament’s bronze medal game against the seventh seeded University de Montreal Carabins set for 2 p.m. at Merlis.

The Stingers came storming out of the gate in Saturday’s semifinal jumping out to a 2-0 lead in the first period while holding a 12-6 edge in shots on goal. Third-year centre Zoe Thibault and second-year left-winger Courtney Rice netted singles for the Stingers in the opening frame.

Concordia pressed to get further ahead on the scoreboard in the second holding a 14-6 edge in shots on goal, but they were held at bay by the heroics of Schnarr.

Working on a power play to start the third, the Warriors came up with a big traction moment. Holding the puck at the right side boards, Warriors fourth-year centre Leah Herrfort passed the puck across the front of the Stingers net backdoor to skilled third-year left-winger Tatum James. James tucked home her fourth goal of the tournament to cut the Stingers lead to 2-1.

The Stingers celebrate their win on Saturday.

James’ goal energized the Warriors, but the Stingers were able to stay composed and protect their lead. That set the stage for Drapeau to ice the victory for Concordia with her short-handed tally.

Jordyn Verbeek stopped 19 shots to pick up the win in goal for the Stingers.

Going into Sunday’s championship final, the Stingers will be trying to win their fourth U Sports title in team history having won the U Sports women’s hockey crown the first two times it was contested in 1998 and 1999.

The Warriors were trying to make the U Sports title game for the first time in team history.

Varsity Blues claim Cinderella battle with Carabins, other notes

Erica Fryer (#30) makes a save in goal for the Varsity Blues.

The glass slippers proved to be a better fit for the University of Toronto Varsity Blues.

In the second semifinal of the U Sports Women’s Hockey Championship tournament played on Saturday night at Merlis Belsher Place played before 817 spectators, it was a battle of Cinderella teams between the sixth seeded Blues and the seventh seeded University de Montreal Carabins. Neither team wanted to see the clock strike midnight in their respective quests to win a national title.

The two squads went to overtime locked in a 1-1 tie, and the 1-1 tie remained after the two squads played through a 10-minute overtime period of four skaters versus four skaters hockey. In the sixth round of the tiebreaking shootout, Varsity Blues first-year right-winger Ashley Delahey tucked home a shot past Carabins fifth-year netminder Aube Racine.

Third-year right-winger Amelie Poire-Lehoux came up net to shoot for the Carabins, and she was turned away by Varsity Blues netminder Erica Fryer. That stop by Fryer allowed the Varsity Blues to take the tiebreaking session 1-0 and the game 2-1.

With the win, the Varsity Blues advance to play in Sunday’s U Sports championship game against the top seeded Concordia University Stingers set for 6 p.m. on Sunday at Merlis.

The Carabins will take part in Sunday’s bronze medal game against the fourth seeded University of Waterloo Warriors at 2 p.m. at Merlis.

Ashley Delahey scored the tiebreaking shootout winner.

For the Varsity Blues, they will be playing in the U Sports title game on Sunday for the first time since 2003. In the 2003 U Sports championship tournament played in Regina, the Varsity Blues fell 5-4 in overtime to the University of Alberta Pandas.

The Varsity Blues lone U Sports title win came in the 2001 U Sports championship tournament held in Calgary, when they downed the University of Regina Cougars 4-3. The Varsity Blues went up 3-0 in that contest, but the Cougars rallied to tie the score at 3-3 in the third. Later in the third, the Varsity Blues netted the winning goal.

In Saturday’s clash between the Varsity Blues and Carabins, third-year defender Kalie Chan gave the U of T side a 1-0 lead firing home a shot from just above the top of the left faceoff circle at the 9:55 mark of the opening period. Delahey picked up the lone assist on Chan’s tally.

It appeared for the longest time Chan’s lone tally would stand up as the only goal of the contest.

At the 5:01 mark of the third, the Carabins found the equalizer that forced a 1-1 tie score. Carabins fifth-year centre and captain Jessika Boulanger had the puck on the right faceoff dot in the Varsity Blues zone.

She passed the puck across the face of the goal for a backdoor setup to first-year left-winger Juliette Rolland at the left side of the net. Rolland made no mistake knocking home the equalizer. Defender Jade Picard picked up a second assist on Rolland’s goal.

The Varsity Blues start to celebrate a berth in the U Sports title game.

That set the stage for the game to go to overtime and a tiebreaking shootout, where Delahey scored the only goal in the tiebreaking session in the sixth round.

Fryer stopped 25 shots over 70 minutes and all six shooters she faced in the shootout to pick up the win in goal for the Varsity Blues. Racine turned away 23 shots over 70 minutes and five out of six shooters in the shootout.

The Varsity Blues are appearing in the U Sports title game for the fourth time in team history.

The Carabins last appeared in the U Sport championship contest in 2016 blanking the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds 8-0, when the national championship tournament was held in Calgary. The Carabins have appeared in four U Sports championship games winning twice.

• The host University of Saskatchewan Huskies downed the Saint Xavier X-Women in the first consolation semifinal on Saturday 3-1 at the U Sports Women’s Hockey Championship tournament at Merlis. Defender Brooklyn Stevely had a goal and an assist for the Huskies. Netminder Camryn Drever made 37 saves to pick up the win in goal for U of S.
• The University of British Columbia Thunderbirds blanked the University of New Brunswick Red 4-0 in the second consolation semifinal on Saturday 4-0 at the U Sports Women’s Hockey Championship tournament at Merlis. Chanreet Bassi scored twice for the Thunderbirds, while Joelle Fiala and Sierra LaPlante netted singles.
• The consolation final between the Huskies and Thunderbirds at the U Sports Women’s Hockey Championship tournament is set for 10 a.m. Sunday at Merlis.
• Stingers captain Emmy Fecteau might be the best two-way player at the U Sports Women’s Hockey Championship tournament going on at Merlis. Fecteau has one goal in the Stingers two wins, and she is able to play in all situations for her squad.
• Stevely returned to the Huskies for the U Sports Women’s Hockey Championship tournament after she missed the entire 2023-24 campaign to that point battling and beating ovarian cancer. A trio of Saskatoon media outlets did great work on Stevely’s story. Darren Zary’s piece in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix on Stevely can be found by clicking right here. A story by Brooke Kruger and Scott Roblin of Global News Saskatoon on Stevely can be found by clicking right here. Shane Clausing’s story for 650 CKOM on Stevely can be found by clicking right here.
• Sunday’s U Sports title game features two teams in the Concordia University Stingers and the University of Toronto Blues that appeared in the U Sports championship contest held back in 1998. In that game, the Stingers, who were the host squad, claimed a 4-1 victory.

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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Huskies put up fight, Stingers take victory 4-0

Top seeded Concordia advances to U Sports tourney semifinal

Emilie Lussier celebrates her second of two goals for the Stingers.

The Concordia University Stingers winning pedigree came through.

On Thursday night in a quarter-final contest at the U Sports Women’s Hockey Championship tournament, the top seeded Stingers absorbed the best shot from the pesky eighth seeded host University of Saskatchewan Huskies. The Stingers proceeded to play skilled and physical and slowly took the contest away from the Huskies causing a raucous crowd 2,364 spectators at Merlis Belsher Place to fall quite.

When the dust settled, the Stingers blanked the host Huskies 4-0 to advance to the semifinal round. Concordia will play the fourth seeded University of Waterloo Warriors in Saturday’s first semifinal set for 4 p.m. at Merlis. That clash will see the Reseau du Sport Etudiant du Quebec champions in the Stingers face the OUA champions in the Warriors.

Emmy Fecteau scored the Stingers first goal on Thursday.

The Huskies will take on the St. Francis Xavier X-Women in consolation semifinal set for 10 a.m. on Saturday.

“That one stings for sure,” said Huskies captain Kennedy Brown, who is in her fifth and final year of U Sports eligibility. “I mean it didn’t feel like a 4-0 game on our part.

“I think the girls battled really hard. We knew we were coming up against some steep competition them being ranked number one in the country coming off an undefeated regular season. To instill a little bit of fear in them early on and get a couple of chances, I mean that is all we can ask for from our team.

“We pop a couple of those early on, and it is a completely different game for us. For them to get a lucky bounce on that first one, it was definitely not the outcome we wanted. I mean I couldn’t have asked for more of an effort from the girls.”

Isabella Pozzi brings the puck up ice for the Huskies.

The Stingers came into Thursday quarter-final with a history of having won the U Sports title in 2022 and having fallen in the U Sports championship game a year ago to the Mount Royal University Cougars. This season, the Stingers posted a perfect 25-0 record in the regular season and a 4-2 mark in the post-season that saw them capture the RSEQ title.

The Huskies finished fourth in the Canada West Conference with a 19-7-2 mark and fell in a best-of-three conference quarter-final series in a series deciding Game 3 to the U of Calgary Dinos 2-0.

Backed by a vocal home crowd that was the largest to see a women’s hockey game in Saskatchewan’s history outside of contests involving Canada’s Senior National Women’s team, the Huskies came flying out of the gate. They had numerous quality scoring chances in the first period holding a 11-7 edge in shots on goal.

Part of the crowd of 2,364 cheers on the Huskies.

The Stingers exited the frame with the only goal coming from the stick of captain Emmy Fecteau. On a delayed penalty call situation, Fecteau took a shot from the right faceoff dot in the U of S zone, and the puck deflected off a Huskies skater, flipped high in the air and floated over top of Huskies star goaltender Camryn Drever into the net to give the Stingers a 1-0 lead.

Huskies head coach Steve Kook said it was tough to exit the opening 20 minutes down 1-0 on the scoreboard with his side having played well in the frame.

“The plan was to always take our swing at these guys,” said Kook. “We had nothing to lose.

Camryn Drever made 37 saves in goal for the Huskies.

“You look at the first period, we hit a post on an empty net. (Bronwyn) Boucher hits a crossbar. On the power play, SK (Sara Kendall) slides it through their goalie’s five-hole, hits the back leg and comes back out.”

Kook said he could sense the crowd at Merlis really wanted to erupt with noise, and he thought the outcome of the contest could have gone a different way had the Huskies scored in that frame.

“I think if we get one we get multiples, especially with the crowd the way it was,” said Kook. “We haven’t played in front of this size of a crowd, and I don’t think they’ve played in front of this size of a crowd either.

Rosalie Begin-Cyr scored the Stingers second goal on Thursday.

“I seriously thought if we would have got one we would have got more.”

The Stingers began to take control of the contest coming out of the first intermission. At the 3:12 mark of the second, fifth-year right-winger Rosalie Begin-Cyr popped home an insurance goal that gave the Stingers a 2-0 edge.

In the third, first-year left-winger Emilie Lussier scored to push the Stingers advantage out to 3-0. She added an empty-net goal to round out the 4-0 final in the Stingers favour with 40.6 seconds remaining in the frame.

“I think it was a really, really fun game to play and be a part of,” said Stingers head coach Julie Chu, who was named the U Sports coach of the year on Wednesday. “We have some experience in that locker room, but we also have a really young team in other aspects of it.

Kara Kondrat brings the puck up ice for the Huskies.

“I think for us we know that we dodged a bullet in that first period. I think we needed to start on time. They definitely started on time.

“We were lucky that (netminder) Jordyn Verbeek did a great job for us in that first period. We know that we were lucky to come out 1-0 out of that. I liked our response in the second and in the third period.”

Verbeek stopped all 26 shots she faced to pick up the shutout win in goal for the Stingers. Centre Justine Yelle and left-winger Emilie Lavoie each had a pair of assists for Concordia.

Drever turned away 37 shots to take the setback in net for the Huskies.

A group of youngsters cheer on the Stingers.

Chu said her squad will turn their attention to the task at hand in the semifinal round, but her club was going to take in the spoils of victory on Thursday night.

“I think for us we’re going to enjoy this one for today,” said Chu. “It is not easy to win, and it is not easy to win against that team.

“It is a battle, and it was a battle tonight. They played really, really well. I know that we are really grateful to play here and then to be able to earn the win and have an opportunity to play in the semis on Saturday against Waterloo.

“I think for us we will enjoy it for now and do the right things in our rest and our recovery. Once we wake up, we are going to turn the page and start our preparation and our focus towards what we need to do on Saturday to be successful.”

The Stingers celebrate their win on Thursday night.

While the Huskies can’t play for a national title, Brown said she still wants to do what she can to play two more games with the U of S side before graduating from the U Sports ranks. The emotion of how tough it was to fall to the Stingers was visible in the tears in Brown’s eyes, but she still wants to press on.

“That is kind of our focus now is just to if can draw out our season a little bit more, especially us as six years, us super vets,” said Brown. “We don’t want to be done by any means, so if we can play one more on Sunday, that would be a dream come true.

“We didn’t want to be on the consolation side of things, but that is the reality of a tournament like this. It is win or die. When you are ranking eighth and you know you are coming up against number one, those are some stiff odds to fight against.

“Our focus is to come out Saturday fresh and again just leave a mark, leave it all in the ice and hope to play on Sunday.”

James’ hat trick powers Warriors to 6-1 win

Tatum James (#88) celebrates her second goal on Thursday.

Tatum James was on fire for the University of Waterloo Warriors.

The third-year left-winger had a hat trick and one assist to power her Warriors to a 6-1 victory over the St. Francis Xavier X-Women in Thursday’s first quarter-final of the U Sports Women’s Hockey Championship tournament. The contest started out as a tight one with the fourth-seeded Warriors holding a 1-0 edge after 40 minutes before avalanching offensively in the third period.

James scored just 27 seconds into the contest to give the Warriors a 1-0 edge. After a scoreless second, the Warriors scored three straight goals to surge their advantage out to 4-0 before cruising to the 6-1 win at Merlis Belsher Place.

Defender Sarah Bestic scored at the 7:36 mark of the third to put the Warriors up 2-0. James added her second of the contest at the 11:33 mark of the third and completed her hat trick scoring a short-handed empty-net goal at the 16:20 mark of the frame.

Centre Ireland McCloskey tallied on the power-play for the X-Women at the 17:29 mark of the third to trim the Warriors lead to 4-1.

Tatum James had a hat trick and an assist on Thursday.

Left-wingers Carly Orth and Madison Pritchard rounded out the scoring with singles for the Warriors. James picked up an assist on Pritchard’s power-play tally.

Mikayla Schnarr stopped 20 shots to pick up the win in goal for the Warriors, who are the OUA champions. Amaya Giraudier turned away 22-of-27 shots to take the setback in net for the X-Women, who are the tournament’s fifth seed. Giraudier, who is in her third year with the X-Women, is an alumna of the Swift Current Innovation Federal Credit Union Wildcats under-18 AAA team.

The X-Women play in a consolation semifinal at 10 a.m. at Merlis against the eight seed and host University of Saskatchewan Huskies. The Warriors advance to play in a semifinal against the top seeded Concordia University Stingers at 4 p.m. at Merlis. The Stingers are the champions of Reseau du Sport Etudiant du Quebec.

The second set of the quarter-finals are set for Friday at Merlis. The Canada West champion University of British Columbia Thunderbirds, who are the second seed, face the Universite de Montreal Carabins, who are the seventh seed, at 1 p.m.

The Warriors celebrate their win on Thursday.

The AUS champion University of New Brunswick Reds, who are the third seed, take on the University of Toronto Varsity Blues, who are the sixth seed, at 7 p.m.

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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Rageahol runs through Rider Nation when Roughriders lose

Head coach and GM Chris Jones, centre, and the Roughriders lost a bad one.

    It is almost comical the way rageahol runs through Rider Nation when the Saskatchewan Roughriders lose.

    On June 15, the Roughriders opened the CFL regular season with a 27-19 victory over the defending Grey Cup champion Toronto Argonauts in the friendly confines of Mosaic Stadium. Everything was great, and Roughriders fans seemed to have visions of a memorable campaign ending in a Grey Cup triumph.

    On Thursday, the Roughriders played their second regular season game traveling to Ottawa to face the host Redblacks. Before 24,224 spectators at TD Place Stadium, the Redblacks rolled to a 40-17 victory.

    The Redblacks played great, but the Roughriders put on one of their classic stinkers. It seems like Saskatchewan is good for three of those a season even in championship campaigns.

    All of a sudden, it seems like a huge vocal group of Roughriders fans collectively push the panic button. The comments on sports talk radio and social media lines seems to be similar every time the Roughriders lose.

    There are calls for players to be traded and coaches and managers to be fired. At times, it seems like no one is immune to criticism in the Roughriders organization.

    If you search hard enough, you will probably find blame getting spread to the waterboy, Gainer the Gopher and the Rider Cheer Team.

    When you look at the schedule, the Roughriders were heading into a buzz saw in their match with the Redblacks.

Charleston Hughes (#39) and the Roughriders had a rough day in Ottawa.

    Saskatchewan was going into that contest on a short week with five off days between games and had to travel. Ottawa had a bye to start the 2018 campaign resulting in the benefit of an extra week to prepare for Saskatchewan.

    In most incidents where that type of situation occurs in professional football, a blowout occurs where the club with the extra rest wins by a lopsided score.

    For those that are part of Roughriders organization, it becomes a daily part of life seeing fans react in extremes with their emotions. The players try not to get too caught up in how the fans react and work on getting better for the next game.

    Thursday’s loss made me flashback to a bad setback the Roughriders had in the 2008 CFL season. On Oct. 13, 2008, the Roughriders were heading to Calgary to play the host Stampeder at McMahon Stadium.

    Both teams went head-to-head 10 days earlier at Taylor Field in Regina, where the Roughriders pulled out a 37-34 victory.

    Both clubs were sporting 9-5 records and the winner would sit alone in first place in the West Division. The squad that lost would fall in a three-way tie for second to fourth in the division with the Edmonton Eskimos and British Columbia Lions, who were both 9-6.

    It felt like the clash on Oct. 13, 2008 at McMahon Stadium was over minutes into the first quarter. The Stampeders romped past the Roughriders by a 42-5 final score.

    At the time, I had a number of friends who were playing for the Roughriders. After the game, I visited with a few of them outside the stadium where they boarded the bus.

Rider Nation had a tough day in Calgary on October 13, 2008.

    One friend, who was a fan favourite and a regular starter, came to me and he said he didn’t know why the team played so flat. He said everyone was pumped up and motivated for the game and the wheels basically fell off.

    The social media platform Facebook was still fairly new at this time and a lot more basic than it is now. My friend mentioned early in the season he went into Facebook after a loss and there were 30 direct messages waiting for him.

    He pretty much knew most of the messages would be negative so he selected all of them and hit delete. He expected he would have to do the same thing after that loss to the Stampeders.

    My friend on the team said you just had to correct mistakes and move on as nothing could be done to change the outcome of that defeat to the Stampeders.

    To show how long ago that was, most professional squads and high level amateur teams didn’t have policies regarding social media. Twitter was around but wasn’t widely used and Instagram didn’t exist.

    In the current day, most of the fans do their social media venting on Twitter and Facebook. There might be some harsh words in the comments section in the pictures teams post on their Instagram sites, but that isn’t a regular place where displeasure is shown.

    On a side note, I remember one other friend taking that loss in 2008 hard in Roughriders special teams coach Alex Smith. He came out of the stadium door, said “hi” and walked aimlessly into the distance.

    To this day, I think he came back to one of the two team busses, but I am not sure.

Members of Rider Nation leave McMahon Stadium on October 13, 2008.

    Whether it be 2008, 1958, 1968 or 2018, fans in Saskatchewan seem to project getting too high emotionally when the Roughriders win and too low emotionally when they lose.

    What seems to be forgotten is that when the Roughriders win, they still aren’t going to be the second coming of Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers NFL dynasty teams. When the Roughriders lose, they won’t be the current day version of the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers sad sack NFL expansion team.

    All that matters is the 2018 CFL season still young.

    The Roughriders get to go out and try to be a little bit better in their next game on June 30, when they host the Montreal Alouettes (0-2) at 7 p.m. at Mosaic Stadium.

Awards loss by Rams’ Cross a “ho-hum” thing

Rams LB Nick Cross (#9) runs down Thunderbirds QB Cole Meyer.

    University of Regina Rams linebacker Nick Cross had a bit of an awkward week.

    During the 2017 U Sports football season, Cross entered his rookie campaign for the Rams starting at outside linebacker right out of high school. He appeared in all eight of the Rams regular season games recording 46 tackles, three tackles for a loss including a sack, two pass break ups, a forced fumble and an interception.

    For his efforts, he was awarded the Peter Gorman Trophy as the U Sports rookie of the year and a second team U Sports all-Canadian all-star.

    On Wednesday, Cross was stripped of both of those honours by U Sports due to testing positive for cannabis. The graduate of Regina’s Dr. Martin LeBoldus High School was subjected to a random drug test following the Rams final regular season game on Oct. 28, 2017, when they dropped a 44-15 decision to the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds in Vancouver.

    While cannabis will soon be legal, it is still on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s prohibited list. It will still be a banned substance during the U Sports competitive season when it becomes legal.

    Cross was suspended two months, and he became fully active to return to team activities on Jan. 4.

    Before being suspended, Cross appeared in the Rams 28-21 Canada West semifinal playoff loss to the Thunderbirds in Vancouver on Nov. 4, 2017.

    Cross was also stripped of his Canada West rookie-of-the-year award and his Canada West all-star honour.

    The Canada West reward the rookie of the year award to University of Calgary Dinos offensive lineman Tyler Packer and the all-star award at linebacker to Cyril Iwanegbe, who is also from the Dinos.

    At the U Sports national level, quarterback Tre Ford of the University of Waterloo Warriors became the new rookie of the year. The second team U Sports all-Canadian all-star award at linebacker went to Bailey Feltmate of the Acadia University Axemen.

    Of course, Cross tested positive for a drug that doesn’t enhance on field performance. If he battles with mental health issues regarding anxiety, it is possible cannabis might help him get calm before a game, so that technically would help improve performance.

    There would have been a time in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, when this would have been a more major story. In Saskatoon, the sanctions against Cross would have been well known due to the fact he played for the Rams, the Rams had an intense rivalry with Saskatoon and there were more people in the mainstream media that would track such a story.

    The fans in Saskatoon would be out in full force to heckle the Rams the next time they played the University of Saskatchewan Huskies at Griffiths Stadium, and Cross would have been a target. The rivalry between Saskatoon and Regina was very heated back then.

    These days, there likely aren’t very many people in the general public in Saskatoon who know Cross is. The news of the sanctions against him are pretty much “ho-hum” thing.

    A year ago, Rams linebacker Michael Stefanovic removed himself from the 2017 CFL Draft after an alleged doping violation. On May 4, 2017, the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) announced that a urine sample provided by Stefanovic during the CFL’s western regional combine in Regina on March 23, 2017 revealed the presence of drostanolone, which is a prohibited anabolic agent.

    At the time, a violation of the CCES’s anti-doping rules had not been confirmed, but the news about Stefanovic was disclosed due to the fact he was eligible for the CFL Draft.

    On October 23, 2017, the CCES confirmed Stefanovic’s doping violation. He was given a sanction of four years ineligibility from sport. He is ineligible to participate in any capacity with any sport signatory to the Canadian Anti-Doping Program including training with teammates.

    The news around Stefanovic barely made a ripple outside of Regina. Thanks to the fact he had exhausted his U Sports eligibility at the time of his drug infraction, there were very few follow up pieces if any in the mainstream media when his suspension was announced.

    It is highly unlikely Stefanovic would play any sort of competitive sport again, so there wouldn’t be any motivation to do any follow story in most media outlets.

    If what happened Stefanovic occurred in the late 1990s or early 2000s, that would have added fuel to the fire for Saskatoon fans to heckle the Rams.

    Also during that period of time if members of any Huskies teams went through situations like Cross and Stefanovic experienced, the Huskies teams would receive biting heckles by fans in Regina when they arrived in the Saskatchewan capital for road games.

    In the grand scheme of things, what Stefanovic was found guilty of was likely worse than what Cross was found guilty of. Cross’s infraction will likely be more of a small bump in the road.

    Thanks to the fact U Sports doesn’t have as high of a profile as it once did due to the media cut era of today, stories like the situations involving Cross and Stefanovic will be viewed as minor and will likely be quickly forgotten.

    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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    If you like what you see here, you might want to donate to the cause to keep independent media like this blog going. Should you choose to help out, feel free to click on the DONATE button in the upper right corner. Thank you for stopping in.