About us

What is this place?

The CIS Blog, a website dedicated to covering university sports in Canada, was founded in August 2007 by sportswriters James Mirtle, of The Globe and Mail, and Neate Sager, now with Yahoo! Sports. (Our nondescript name is all Mirtle's fault, but we still like him anyway.)

Seven years later, we are going strong with about a dozen contributors located throughout Canada. We try to be a comprehensive source for CIS news, analysis, and commentary; an aggregator for news from across the country; and a place where CIS diehards can have intelligent conversations on their own terms.

We cover regular events and important topics in football, basketball, hockey, and volleyball (and others), having sent accredited reporters to cover national championships in seven sports. Our RSS feed is available from this link, and you can follow us on Twitter as well.

Some of our current and former contributors are or were CIS student-athletes, or involved with a university athletics department in some way, but the site itself is entirely independent. We are not affiliated in any way with Canadian Interuniversity Sport, any of its member schools, or any other media outlet. (From November 2008 to August 2011, we were affiliated with The Score as part of their Sports Federation.)

We thank you for coming to visit, and we hope you'll stick around.

Contact information

Want to contribute? Have other questions? Contact Shelby or Scott.

About our team

Editors

Shelby Blackley (@shelbyblackley), previously the sports editor at The Cord and CUP national sports editor, spent her final year in university newspapers as The Cord's Editor-in-Chief. She now works for The Globe and Mail.

Scott Hastie (@Scott1Hastie) is the current Editor-in-Chief at The Silhouette and originally joined us in 2012-13 to cover basketball.

Contributors

Jared Book (@jaredbook), one of our longest-serving writers and formerly with The Concordian, is a sports writer based in Montreal who knows the Quebec university scene well.

Kyle Brown (@BrownKyleW, kylewbrown.com), a freelance journalist and editor usually covering hockey for us, was previously the editor-in-chief and sports editor at Laurier Brantford's The Sputnik, and can currently be found .

Andrew Bucholtz (@andrewbucholtz) is a former sports editor of the Queen's Journal, a contributor to The CIS Blog since 2008, and a former editor here as well. He covers the CFL for Yahoo! Sports Canada.

Fraser Caldwell (@fraser_caldwell) previously the sports editor at The Silhouette, now working for the Marauders' communications department and as a freelance reporter for Canadian Press, joined us as a volleyball columnist, though he is often found in our football coverage as well.

Brian Decker (@Decker_Brian), part of our men's basketball coverage, was previously the sports editor and executive editor at The Silhouette. A former varsity golfer at McMaster, Brian is now a media official with the PGA Tour Canada.

Kevin Garbuio (@Buio11), based in Fort McMurray, previously played football for Acadia, and covers football and basketball for us.

Bronté James (@Bronte_James), formerly the sports editor of The Brunswickan, is now a reporter with The Daily Gleaner.

David Kilfoil (@dkilfoil) has covered AUS men's hockey for a long time, for example as a broadcaster with CHSR-FM (and also here).

Perry King (@kingperry) writes about basketball and football, primarily focusing on the OUA. Perry is a freelance journalist based in Toronto and former sports editor at the Varsity.

Robert Murray (@NovaCanuck) was previously the national sports editor for the Canadian University Press and sports editor at The Argosy, and has also joined The CIS Blog's new Wood Buffalo bureau as a sports reporter with Fort McMurray Today.

Rob Pettapiece (@RobPettapiece), a sports analyst and statistician based out of southern Ontario, has also contributed to The CIS Blog since 2008, focusing on basketball and producing most of the site's analytical work, and was previously an editor here as well.

Neate Sager (@neatebuzzthenet) probably needs no introduction to our blog's readers, because...well, he ran the site for years. He now covers major junior hockey for Yahoo! Sports.

(Last updated: 2014-08-14.)