Tag: D’Arcy Ryan

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Concordia Esports aims to start intramural league

League of Legends
Archive graphic by Zeze Le Lin.

League of Legends will be the first game available for casual gamers

The Concordia Esports Association (CESA) wants to expand from its competitive teams and organize an intramural league for students. President Dimitri Kontogiannos said the club is looking for people to play League of Legends in a fun, non-competitive environment.

”We’ve seen there are a lot of students that want to play in Concordia Esports organized events, but we’ve only really had a competitive team before,” Kontogiannos said. “So there was a lack of structured events for people who are a lower caliber or just don’t want to play on the competitive team.”

Kontogiannos said CESA is starting with League of Legends as its inaugural intramural game because it has the biggest following on campus. Games will be on Friday nights and players can sign up either as an individual and be put in a team, or a team can sign up together. Although the club will start with one game, they hope to expand to Overwatch and Super Smash Bros in the future.

The intramural league will be organized independently from Concordia, unlike its intramural leagues with traditional sports such as hockey, soccer, and basketball. Despite this, Stingers athletic director D’Arcy Ryan believes there’s room for growth for Esports at Concordia.

“Montreal is a hotbed of talent in the gaming industry because of some of the big companies like Ubisoft and CGI,” Ryan said. “We have the academic talent with programmers in the engineering faculty, so I think there’s a great potential for a partnership between the academic and recreational side to promote the gaming market.”

Kontogiannos has also seen Esports grow at the university level across the country. “All schools see the popularity and growth of Esports,” he said. “There’s significant interest in Canadian schools. At Concordia, [it’s] because of inclusiveness, and they use sport as a means to attract new students.”

Through the intramural league, CESA wants to introduce students, particularly first-years, to other students that share their passion. First-year students can focus too much on video games, according to League of Legends team manager Guillaume Bélisle.

“They play too many video games in the first year and then crash and burn [mentally],” Bélisle said in an interview with The Concordian in September. “Then in the second and third year, they will focus more on their studies. It’s all about balance.”

“In my first semester, this is the way I met people at the school,” Kontogiannos added. “I didn’t have many friends coming from Dawson to my program, so to find new people was one of the catalysts as to why I joined [CESA].”

Kontogiannos also believes video games play an important role in integrating new students from abroad. “[League of Legends] transcends countries,” he said. “It’s not just in North America that people play it, but also in Europe, in Asia, and even the Oceanic region. It’s a game the school can really benefit from by having organized activities around it.”

The president also wants to use the intramural league to potentially recruit players for their competitive team. “We just want people to have fun,” he said. “But it always ends up with us looking at new talent that’s popping up around Concordia, or seeing talented players that we didn’t have the chance to see before.”

Still, Kontogiannos wants the players to enjoy it. “I hope there are some good games. I know non-competitive players tend to stray out of the competitive strategies, so it’s a whole new game.”

To sign up for the intramural league, you can visit CESA’s Facebook page.

Archive graphic by Zeze Le Lin.

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Sports

Stingers football head coach wants to know players better

The Stingers missed the playoffs for the first time in five years. Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

Team faced challenges with Collinson coming in so close to start of year

The past 12 months for the Concordia Stingers football team have been a roller-coaster ride. Former head coach Mickey Donovan left the team last January for the Montreal Alouettes, and his brother Pat, who was the interim head coach, quit last May.

Current head coach Brad Collinson took over in June, and the team finished the season with a 2-6 record. They missed the playoffs for the first time since 2013, when they went 0-8. The head coach was on CJLO Sports on Oct. 29 and talked about the challenges of taking over the team so close to the start of the season.

“You don’t know the student-athletes so there’s that progression and adaptation,” Collinson said. “So for them, not knowing me as well, trying to get our points across on things we wanted to do and things we wanted to instill took some time.”  

The Stingers allowed the most rushing yards this season, with 6.9 yards/carry. Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

Despite the quick changes, Collinson is still happy about how his players adapted. “The kids bought into what we were trying to do,” he added. “So that, moving forward, will be very helpful and they’ll be able to teach the new kids coming in how we want to do things.”

In addition to the new coach, the Stingers also had a new starting quarterback. Adam Vance took over from Trenton Miller, who graduated at the end of last season. Miller was hurt towards the end of last year, so Vance did get a few starts, but that was under Donovan’s offence.

Vance finished the season with 1,635 yards passing, 56.4 per cent completion, five touchdowns and 10 interceptions in eight starts. Despite throwing the most interceptions in the Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec (RSEQ) this season, he had the second-most passing yards, behind Université de Laval Rouge et Or’s Hugo Richard.

“I’m sure he’s not as happy as he wants to be with his season but, moving forward, I think he can build on this,” Collinson said. “Hopefully, for next year, he’ll come in prepared and know what to expect as a starter.”

Vance had the luxury of having Jarryd Taylor available as a receiver. He finished the season with 24 catches for a league-high 527 yards, and two touchdowns. Collinson expects the third-year player to be a major part of his team next season.

“He had some really big games then teams caught up to what he was doing, so he can grow from this as well,” the Stingers football head coach said.

On the defensive side of the ball, the Stingers gave up the most points in the RSEQ, allowing 38 points per game—no other team allowed more than 30. They had only 10 forced turnovers on defence, compared to 25 on offence, once again the worst in each category. Rushing was their biggest weakness, allowing 6.9 yards per carry, and opponents scored 15 touchdowns against the Stingers on the ground.

For the head coach, fixing the defensive problems is a priority in the offseason. “We’re going to look ourselves in the mirror and see what we need to do to get better,” Collinson said, adding that they’re going back to the drawing board.

Coaching job posted

Concordia University posted a job opening for the Stingers football head coach position on Oct. 30. Stingers athletics director D’Arcy Ryan said it’s just a human resource formality, since they didn’t go through this process with Collinson in June.

“After Mickey Donovan quit last January, the job was never posted, so we’re just through the regular process,” Ryan said. “Collinson was not relieved of his duties and he’s still under contract with us.”

With files from Matthew Coyte. Main photo by Mackenzie Lad.

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Concordia Swarm bringing passion back to Stingers games

Born to Bee is the new slogan of the Concordia Swarm. Photo by Alex Hutchins.

Supporters group got a rebrand for the 2018-19 season

Concordia’s athletics director, D’Arcy Ryan, can be found at most Stingers’s sports games. He’s usually supporting the university’s teams, even on weekends. This year he wants to see an energetic crowd at the sports games.

“We want to be as competitive as possible,” Ryan said. “I want other [teams] to not want to come play here.”

The athletics director wants to see opposing teams face an intimidating atmosphere, and he might just get it this year. The Concordia Swarm, an old supporters group of the Concordia Stingers, is getting a revival this year after two years away.

This year, the Swarm went through a rebirth, and Ryan said that was thanks to Kathleen DiCaprio, the Stingers’s marketing manager. DiCaprio is a Concordia graduate, and she said that while she was a student, she didn’t know when Stingers games were, but would have attended them if she did. When she was hired by the Stingers in April 2018, she wanted to make sure other students knew about the sports teams.

“My main goal is to get more students aware,” DiCaprio said. “It’s not necessarily to get more ticket sales or more money, it’s just to show [students] what Concordia has to offer.”

DiCaprio wanted to bring the Swarm back to increase students’ awareness of the sports teams, so she hired students to help her. “At the end of the day, students listen to students. They don’t listen to deans or the higher people in the university; they want to hear stuff from students.”

Men’s soccer goalie Karl Gouabé is in charge of marketing for the Swarm. Photo by Alex Hutchins.

Men’s soccer goalie Karl Gouabé, who is taking care of marketing and partnerships, was one of the students hired.

“When I joined [the Swarm], the challenge was to make the distinction between the Stingers and the Swarm,” Gouabé said. Before the rebranding, the Swarm used the same logo as the Stingers, and often students thought they were part of the Stingers. 

“When [the Swarm] used to show up at Frosh, for example, they got a lot of questions asking if they did try-outs for the Stingers,” Gouabé added. “That’s the biggest purpose of the whole rebranding.”

So the Swarm came out with a new logo and a new motto in August. Their old slogan, “Fear the Swarm,” was replaced with “Born to Bee.” Gouabé said the new identity is to distinguish the Swarm from the Stingers brand. The Swarm is associated with the Stingers, but not directly part of their team.

“On our social media, we’re making sure people know we’re the official page of the supporters group,” Gouabé said. “So my job in there is to make that distinction as clear as possible.”

The third-year soccer goalie said Facebook and Instagram are the biggest tools to promote their group.

“The Facebook and Instagram business pages are very great to reach out to very specific target audiences, like reaching out to specifically Concordia students,” Gouabé said. “I don’t see myself going out there and collecting emails. It’s really weird asking a student for their email so I could tell them to come to games.”  

Gouabé said he’s already researched what audiences he needs to target, and the next step in promoting the Swarm is to pay for promotion on social media. He said the Instagram page has gotten over 200 new followers since they started last month, but paid promotion will help them gain followers.

The Swarm will be at four games this fall season, including the football home opener on Sept. 8 at 1 p.m. at the Concordia Stadium. For the pregame party, there will be a barbecue, face painting, an inflatable house, beer, and food trucks.

“We’re going to have Swarm gear, and we have flags, banners, chants” Gouabé said. “We’re going to be trash-talking the other team, but keep it G-rated.”

The Swarm want to let students know about the Stingers, and see more students at the games. Archive photo by Alex Hutchins.

Gouabé said the Swarm will also be at the baseball home opener on Sept. 11, the football homecoming game on Sept. 22, and the Erica Cadieux Memorial game. The Erica Cadieux game is an annual women’s soccer game during which the Stingers accept toys to donate to the Montreal Children’s Hospital. The group will add more games as the season goes on.

“Our goal for this year is to fill these stands as much as possible, even with the soccer games,” Gouabé said.

DiCaprio said she would like more students to come out and watch Stingers games too.

“I saw the numbers from last year, and at some of our football games, less than 10 per cent of students were there,” DiCaprio said. “It’s a student university game, how is this even possible? My goal is to increase that number significantly so we could get more students at the games and have more fun events.”

While Stingers crowds may be tough against opponents, like Ryan wanted, the director also believes the Swarm will do more than just intimidate the other teams.

“The Concordia Swarm will tie in the Concordia community and students who like sports,” Ryan said. “It’s a great way to unite first-year students too.”

You can check out the Concordia Swarm on Facebook and Instagram (@concordia_swarm) for all their news and events.  

Main photo by Alex Hutchins.

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Sports

Stingers make multiple staff changes heading into new year

Brad Collinson will take over as head coach of the football team. Archive photo by Alex Hutchins.

Two former student-athletes hired for coaching positions

There are new faces on the Concordia Stingers coaching staff this season, as the organization had a busy summer making staff changes.

The Stingers’s adventurous search for a football head coach came to an end this summer. Last January, head coach Mickey Donovan left the team to join the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League (CFL) as a special teams coordinator. His brother Pat took over as interim head coach, but left in May to join his brother with the Alouettes, as the director of football operations.

This left the football team without a coach in late-May, but after Pat’s departure, it was quickly announced that former Stinger Brad Collinson would take over as head coach. Athletics director D’Arcy Ryan said he knew about Collinson’s history as a coach, and had included him as a candidate when Mickey left in January, so it wasn’t a hard decision.

“When the time came [to find a new head coach], it was an easy phone call to make to discuss the position with him over a cup of coffee,” Ryan said.

Collinson played for the Stingers as an offensive lineman from 2000 to 2002, and captained the team. He played one season with the Alouettes in 2003 before going back to Concordia as a part-time assistant coach in 2004, and stayed on staff with the Stingers until 2010.

“We always want to be competitive,” Ryan added on what he expects from Collinson. “But he’s inheriting someone’s team and didn’t have time to recruit, so we’re looking for a culture change.”

The women’s soccer team will have a new coach for the first time in 16 years. Archive photo by Alex Hutchins.

The Stingers also hired another former player to lead the women’s rugby team. Jocelyn Barrieau last played for the Stingers in 2011, and has been the skills coach for men’s team since 2013. She coached the Dawson Blues women’s rugby team to four championships from 2007 to 2011. As head coach, she says she wants to focus on her athletes’ academics.

“The first goal is to ensure a 100 per cent graduation rate,” she told the Stingers’s website after she was hired in July.

Finally, Jorge Sanchez has left his position as head coach of the women’s soccer team after 16 years. Instead of getting a direct replacement for Sanchez, Greg Sutton, who’s been the men’s head coach since 2013, will be in control of both teams. Ryan said the idea to have Sutton as master coach came up about a year ago, and after candidates for the women’s coaching position dropped out, the Stingers approached Sutton to take control of both teams.

Not only does Ryan want Sutton to develop players, but also management. “We’re looking for Sutton to really grow his staff and develop assistant coaches,” Ryan said.

Main photo by Alex Hutchins. 

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