Canada West set to welcome Mount Royal for 2012-13 season

posted by on 2 comments
Canada West will be adding another set of Cougars to the mix for the 2012-13 season when Mount Royal University in Calgary joins the conference. The Cougars - who share the same name as the University of Regina's squads - will join the conference as a probationary member starting this September and will have teams competing in men's and women's basketball, hockey, soccer and volleyball starting in the fall of 2012.

Mount Royal will become the 15th member of the conference with Calgary joining Winnipeg - home of the University of Winnipeg and University of Manitoba - as the only other city in the conference featuring two competing institutions.

The Cougars will become the 10th team in men's soccer, the 11th in women's soccer, the 12th team in men's and women's volleyball, and the 15th team in both men's and women's basketball. Mount Royal will also give both men's and women's hockey an eighth team.

UBC Okanagan in Kelowna is also moving into the Canada West fold after a year as a probationary member, and will compete in both basketball and volleyball starting this fall. Of course all this expansion talk - especially when we're talking about basketball - gets to the issue of tiering, or divisions. Whatever you want to call it, the issue of forming divisions is only going to continue to heat up in the coming months and years.
E. Daum

Next PostNewer Post Previous PostOlder Post Home

2 comments:

  1. critic5/08/2011 2:28 pm

    Isn't this one of the reasons why UBC was going to join the NCAA?
    Mount Royal...can hardly wait.

    ReplyDelete
  2. E. Daum5/08/2011 5:24 pm

    This sort of expansion was one of UBC's grievances. They want a "two-tiered" system instituted by 2012-13. This is going to get messy before it gets solved. Where the line is drawn in tiering will be interesting - can a school be a part of one tier in one sport, and another tier for other sports? We will see.

    ReplyDelete