With a new sports categorization system York undermines some of there prime teams while over exaggerating others — just another day at York.
Daniel Rependa
Staff Writer
@excalweb
Well, this will be the last Lions’ Den article until the next publication year. With this in mind, it’s probably appropriate to look at what may be in store for us in the 2012-2013 season.
Probably the biggest change to hit the York sport scene will be the new sport model being implemented for the 2012-2013 season. In 2011, the model released and was said to be a way to classify York sports teams. With the new model, all of York’s sports teams will be divided into three categories: elite, high performance, and competitive.
The category a sports team is placed in depends on a few factors, things like the history of success, capacity to influence York’s national reputation, and the presence of skilled athletes. Other teams are being moved into a recreational category, but can still get funding if they can make an OUA championship.
We have four teams that will be given elite status and focus. We have our men’s and women’s soccer teams who have consistently made it into the playoffs every year with winning percentages as high as .800. Our women’s volleyball team also made the cut. Their coach was named OUA coach of the year and the team went almost undefeated during the season.
And then, we have our football team.
Let me present the overarching truth about our football team. For the past six years, we have won a total of three games and have consistently been second last in the league, better only than University of Toronto.
“What?” Why in the world is our worst-performing sports team in the elite category?
They never come anywhere near the playoffs whatsoever. There has been no gradual improvement.
Yet, somehow they managed to be categorized as an elite team over our hockey, cross country, track and field, men’s volleyball, and both men’s and women’s basketball teams. These are teams that consistently make playoffs and win awards and make dents in the OUA sports scene. Come to think of it, virtually any other sports team would be a better choice to label “elite” rather than our football team.
For us to place our football team ahead of so many other teams is backwards.
Now, I cannot claim to know York’s motives behind this decision. Perhaps they feel as if football is the strongest sport in the OUA and will bring the most attention to York.
But realistically speaking, the only attention York is going to get is negative, given the awful status of our team.
