Brock Badgers teams bow out at U SPORTS hockey, volleyball nationals

Six days after winning their first Ontario titles, Brock Badgers hockey and volleyball teams were ousted in the quarterfinals at U SPORTS championship tournaments.

The women’s volleyball Badgers suffered a straight-sets 25-20, 25-14, 25-21 defeat against the Mount Royal Cougars, who had a hometown crowd urging them on at the Jack Simpson Gym in Calgary.

Libero Aleiah Torres (pictured) had a team-most 11 digs to help the seventh-seeded Badgers stay in rallies, while setter and Milton native Sara Rohr had 26 assists. But Mount Royal controlled play, as evidenced by a .305 hitting percentage to Brock’s .101.

The Badgers, who will play out the string in Calgary on the consolation side, had a team-record 16 victories this season and won their first Quigley Cup with a four-set win against the University of Toronto Varsity Blues on March 19. The trip to the U SPORTS championship was their second in a row, with a year off due to COVID-19 safety measures in 2020-21 sandwiched in between.

Iced on the island

At Charlottetown, the No. 4-seeded Badgers fell 4-0 against the Saskatchewan Huskies in a women’s hockey quarterfinal. Brock was stymied by Huskies goaltender Camryn Drever, who made 27 saves.

The Badgers trailed by just a goal after two periods, thanks in large part to the efforts of goalie Tiffany Hsu (29 saves on the night) and centre Emma Irwin (team-joint-most five shots on goal, 11-of-14 on faceoffs). But Brooklyn Stevely scored for Saskatchewan 1:16 into the third, and a goal less than three minutes later essentially settled the issue.

The women’s hockey Badgers were also a first-time OUA champion, claiming the McCaw Cup with a playoff run that included wins against Guelph, Western and Nipissing.

Both tournaments, and all U SPORTS championships, can be streamed live at CBC Gem and cbcsports.ca. The hockey gold-medal game is at 5 p.m. on Sunday, and the volleyball gold-medal game is an 8 p.m. start.

Super Saturday on tap

Brock is staggering the start times for the three OUA championship games that Badgers teams are hosting on Saturday (March 26). All three are also playing in national tournaments next weekend.

• At 12 noon, the women’s basketball Badgers host the Rams, from downtown Toronto, in the Critelli Cup at the Bob Davis Gymnasium. Both teams ran the table in league play, although the Rams edged Brock by one point in a non-conference tilt back on Oct. 16.Brock is the reigning champion, having won in 2020 prior to the COVID-19 shutdown of university sports.
  The Final 8 for women’s basketball is March 31 to April 3 in Kingston.
• At 4 p.m., Brock hosts the Queen’s Gaels in the Wilson Cup men’s basketball final. The hoops squad, led by fifth-year guard T.J. Lall, goes into the contest ranked No. 4 in the nation. The Badgers have a chance to improve their Final 8 seeding after No. 1-ranked Carleton was upset by No. 9 Queen’s on Wednesday.The men’s hoops Final 8 has gone back to a three-games-in-three-days gauntlet, with no rest day between the quarterfinals and semifinals. The tourney is from April 1 to 3 in Edmonton.
• At 7:15 p.m., Brock hosts the Trois-Rivières Patriotes in the Queen’s Cup men’s hockey championship at the Seymour-Hannah Centre. The winning team will likely wrest a No. 3 seed in next weekend’s University Cup, since tournament rules require the three conference championship to be seeded 1-2-3.

  Brock is 0-2 all-time in the Queen’s Cup, with defeats against McGill in 2008 and ’18.

  The Alberta Golden Bears and New Brunswick Reds, who won the Canada West and Atlantic conference titles, will likely be seeded 1-2 at the University Cup. The tourney is slated for Wolfville, N.S., from March 31 to April 3.

(Cover photo via Brock Badgers.)