Following in the path of his Queen’s teammate Brady Olsen, Gaels star goaltender Ryan Gibb is headed to the Central Hockey League.

Former Gaels Brady Olsen and Mike Giffin will try to repeat their university successes at the professional level. Olsen, a forward who recorded 19 goals and 32 points last season for the Queen’s hockey team and notched 97 points in the 102 games he played in the Tricolour, signed a one-year contract with the Rapid City Rush, a South Dakota-based expansion team in the Central Hockey League. All-Canadian running back Mike Giffin was selected by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats as the 17th overall pick in this year’s CFL college draft.

A springtime Sunday in Montreal saw another chapter written in the storied rivalry between Queen’s and McGill University. The Queen’s rowing team won six of eight races on April 27 to claim the overall title at the 2008 Queen’s-McGill Challenge Boat Race. The Gaels won the annual contest for the fifth straight year, capturing the Lorne Gales Challenge Cup for the eighth time in the 12-year history of the competition.

The study of gender in sport isn’t theoretical for me.
It’s not a chapter in a sociology of sport textbook that I study in order to pass an exam; it’s personal. I come from a family of athletic girls who’ve competed in numerous sports and who’ve watched as our mom passionately tried to keep WTSN, a network devoted to women’s sports, alive as senior vice-president. Needless to say, I’m intensely aware of the inequalities that present challenges for female athletes.

With the movement of Queen’s athletics towards excellence, it’s about time Queen’s gives its coaches due compensation.
No Queen’s coaches are paid full-time.

Craig was instrumental in helping the Gaels capture the OUA women’s title over McGill. She was able to defeat her Western counterpart in the semifinals, helping Queen’s achieve a 4-2 result. Queen’s would go on to tie McGill in the finals. Craig stormed back with an emphatic individual effort during her tiebreaker game as Queen’s walked away with a 12-10 result and the OUA championship. Her play throughout the season earned a place as an OUA First-Team All-Star.

When volleyball rookie Michael Amoroso was choosing which school to attend, he said he knew Queen’s has a reputation among high-school athletes of colour as a predominantly white school.
Amoroso, who’s black, said the racial makeup of a university plays a large role in any visible minority student’s post-secondary decision.

Men’s rugby head coach Peter Huigenbos said a coach’s role is a broad one, but it all comes back to helping athletes. Huigenbos works as a manager of partnerships and initiatives with the City of Kingston in addition to his role as a coach.

March Madness is in full swing in the United States. Many people spent last weekend glued to their TVs hoping their bracket didn’t get busted by another early exit from Duke University.
Unfortunately, enthusiasm for college basketball doesn’t translate north of the border. Not many people tuned in to the CIS Final Eight two weekends ago. Sure, CIS basketball isn’t as good as the NCAA—players are smaller and less athletic, and dunks are few and far between. But it’s still high-quality basketball. Acadia’s double-overtime shocker over Carleton was one of the best games I’ve watched this year.

They’re the people behind the bench and on the sidelines who receive neither credit nor criticism after the game. Although the players are familiar with them, they’re often unknown among fans and media alike.

The following is the Journal’s evaluation of the winter teams’ performances. Grades are based on the teams’ results relative to pre-season projections.

The NHL handed Anaheim Ducks’ star defenceman Chris Pronger an eight-game suspension Saturday for his March 12 stomp on Vancouver Canucks’ forward Ryan Kesler. Originally, Pronger had been let off the hook—the league told him Thursday night he wouldn’t be suspended. When the mainstream and Internet media began criticizing the decision, though, the league miraculously dredged up a clearer camera angle documenting the stomp and suspended Pronger for eight games.

Lindsay Fowler and Amanda Patzalek were the women’s hockey team’s first responders this year. As student-trainers, they acted as the team’s primary resource for dealing with injuries.
Fowler, PHE ’08, said working with the hockey team meant an intensive time commitment all year. The team’s lack of a home arena and early-morning practices made her job difficult this year, Fowler said.