Women’s basketball
Concordia 70 UQAM 53
A third-quarter explosion was enough to propel the Stingers women past an overmatched UQAM team for the second time in a row. After beating the Citadins by 25 points in their last game, the Stingers moved to 5-0 with a 70-53 victory at Loyola campus on Saturday night.
Concordia took an eight-point lead into halftime before blowing the game wide open in the third quarter. The Stingers went on a 9-0 run midway through the quarter and put the game out of reach.
Concordia dominated UQAM in every statistical aspect of the game. The Stingers forced more turnovers and grabbed more rebounds, which were keys to the 17 point victory. On the offensive glass Concordia out-rebounded the Citadins 17-8, mirroring the teams’ last meeting, where the Stingers were much more successful at creating second-chance opportunities.
Stingers guard Kaylah Barrett continued her spectacular play, leading the team with 26 points and grabbing 10 rebounds, for her first double-double of the season. Barrett’s play so far this season is the main reason the Stingers are perfect this far into January for the first time in a decade.
It remains to be seen how long it will take for the rest of the country to notice the Stingers; as of Monday night, they were still not ranked in the CIS top 10, despite their perfect start.
Men’s hockey
Queen’s 9 Concordia 2
Concordia 6 RMC 1
It was a weekend for extremes for the men’s hockey team: extreme blow-outs, extreme weather and extreme fatigue.
The stressful and prolonged trip through the Friday night snow storm to get to Kingston to face the Queen’s Gaels must have had an affect on the team’s performance. The Stingers ended up trailing 4-0 after the first period, and goalie Nicholas Champion was pulled after the second period, having given up seven goals on 19 shots.
The Stingers arrived back in Montreal around 3 a.m. Saturday morning, only to play an afternoon game against the RMC Paladins at 2 p.m.
The Stingers, clearly fatigued, were still able to jump out to a 2-0 lead just two minutes into the game on goals from George Lovatsis and Olivier Jannard. Concordia dominated in the second period, out-shooting the Paladins 16-8 and stretching the score to 5-1.
With just nine seconds remaining, and the game out of reach, Concordia’s Adam Strumas lined up RMC’s Eric Lalonde for a hip-check as Lalonde was streaking down the wing. Lalonde felt like Strumas went too low on the hit, got up and proceeded to viciously cross-check Strumas, igniting some late game fisticuffs.
“Our guy lined him up with a clean hit that [Lalonde] obviously thought was dirty,” said coach Kevin Figsby. “But that’s still no reason to get up and start cross-checking someone in the face.”
Goalie Peter Karvouniaris stopped 39 of 40 shots, getting his fourth win of the season.
Concordia faces off against UQTR next Wednesday night at home at 8:30 p.m.
Women’s hockey
McGill 4 Concordia 0
The Christmas break and a trip to Japan wasn’t enough to rid the Concordia Stingers hockey team of its losing ways. The team was defeated again by an over powering McGill squad. The score had the potential to get really ugly if it weren’t for the play of Stingers goalie Marie-Pier Rémillard who managed to get Concordia through two periods of hockey only trailing 3-0, despite being outshot 31-7 and giving McGill seven powerplays in the first two periods.
Rémillard would end up making 40 saves in the loss. Charline Labonté made 13 saves to get the shut out in the winning effort. The loss was Concordia’s fifth in a row as they have now sunk to last place in the conference and are out of the playoffs as of now.
Stingers in the CSU?
The Concordia Student Union is considering adding an extra seat on their council just for student athletes.
The idea was proposed by CSU councillor and men’s rugby player Emran Ghasemi as an attempt to boost Stinger representation at the school. Ghasemi explained student athletes are “unfortunately not recognized for the immense amount of effort they put into their work,” citing low student attendance at games and a general lack of awareness and team spirit at Concordia, compared to other universities.
Former Stingers Women’s rugby centre Jackie Tittley also attended the meeting, speaking to councillors about the life of a student athlete at Concordia.
After a half-hour of debate, the CSU voted neither for or against Ghasemi’s motion, but instead decided to refer the idea to their Policy Committee, inviting Swarm members and Stingers players to take part in further committee discussions. While no one disagreed that student athletes deserve recognition, many councillors expressed concerns that adding a Stingers-specific seat at council is not the answer and would only result in other student groups demanding similar representation.