Photo by Sandro Schuh on Unsplash
The start of the 2022-2023 academic year also means the start of Brock’s 2022-2023 sports season. With several sports already underway, there is a lot to look forward to this year from the Badgers.
Brock will be looking to build on an incredibly successful 2021-2022 campaign, the best in our school’s history. The Badgers won seven championship titles, including provincial championships in women’s volleyball, women’s ice hockey, men’s and women’s wrestling, men’s fencing, men’s rowing and men’s basketball. 30 teams reached the provincial championships and 10 additionally qualified for Nationals.
The women’s and men’s soccer teams kicked off the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) season with 5-1 and 4-0 wins respectively against Algoma University in Sault St. Marie. The Badgers next played at home against Windsor on Sept. 11, where the women’s team lost a tight 1-0 affair, while the men came out on top.
The 2022-23 season will also see a change in scheduling. In light of the pandemic, sports schedules were condensed from their normal number of games in 2021-22. For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, all OUA schools will compete in a full training and event schedule.
Volleyball goes up from 14 games to 20 games this season. Basketball teams will play a 22-game season after going down to 17 in 2021-22. Both hockey teams will now play a full 27 game regular season, up from 20 last year.
The Brock hockey teams will also have a new home this season. They are moving from Seymour Hannah Arena in St. Catharines to the new Canada Games Park arena. The arena is right across the street from the Brock campus on Isaac Brock Boulevard.
In addition to the new arena, the Brock’s Men’s Hockey team will once again be participating in the Steel Blade Classic, a celebrated tradition that has been on pause since 2019. On Friday Sept. 23, the Badgers will go to the Meridian Centre to face off against the Guelph Gryphons in the 22nd edition of the event.
Several of the Badgers sports programs will see some new faces on their coaching staff as well. The softball team named Courtney Gilbert as their new head coach, who played National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) D1 softball for University at Buffalo and University of Detroit Mercy.
Sean Medeiros is tabbed as the new men’s rugby head coach after working for Rugby Ontario in their provincial and high-performance programs for five years.
T.J. Manastersky will be the Head Coach of Brock’s Men’s Hockey. He was previously the head coach of Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts from 2012 to 2021 and the assistant coach of the Division 1 Union College men’s hockey team in 2022.
After seven seasons as the assistant coach of University of British Columbia Okanagan, Carli Tingstad takes the helm for Women’s Soccer. Former assistant coach of the McMaster’s men’s soccer team Aleks Balta was named the new Brock Men’s Soccer head coach.
David Ling also takes over as the Brock varsity swim coach after coaching the Newmarket Stingrays, St. John Legends Swim Club and Toronto Swim Club.
With all the changes, updates and successes, the 2022-23 athletic season looks promising for the Brock Badgers.