Wesmen Classic cancelled due to COVID concerns

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This article was published 18/12/2021 (1449 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There was more grim news on the pandemic front with Saturday’s cancellation of the Wesmen Classic.

The 54th annual tournament, a fixture on the local holiday sports schedule, was slated for Dec. 28-30 at the Duckworth Centre. It has now been shut down for the second consecutive year after the University of Winnipeg athletic department pulled the plug, citing new provincial health restrictions.

“It was a growing concern the last couple of days for us and then it just became an easy decision,” said University of Winnipeg athletic director Dave Crook.

“No. 1, the safety of our student athletes is the thing that drives all of this. There’s no way that we want to be a spreader in the community. We even bandied about in the last couple of days — when we thought we could still go ahead with a tournament — whether we would just do it without fans.”

This year’s event was to feature men’s basketball for the first time since 2016.

Coach Mike Raimbault’s Wesmen men’s basketball squad is 4-4 in conference play and 7-5 overall at the mid-season mark.

The eight-team tournament, which was to include the host Wesmen, Brandon Bobcats, Manitoba Bisons, Regina Cougars, Lakehead Thunderwolves, Grant MacEwan Griffins, Alberta Golden Bears and Thompson Rivers WolfPack, was a men’s basketball showcase for its first 50 years of existence until administrators decided to start rotating the event between men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball in 2017.

The 2019 event highlighted women’s volleyball for the first time with the Wesmen beating the Manitoba Bisons in the title match.

With Ontario announcing a shutdown earlier in the week and forcing Lakehead to withdraw, organizers briefly entertained the possibility of adding another team to complete the draw and going ahead with the tournament. It was not to be.

Crook was asked what the cancellation of the Wesmen Classic could mean for the remainder of the season for the school’s volleyball and basketball squads.

“I’m hoping that it’s gonna be OK,” said Crook. “We’re looking forward to having the athletes continue to train and getting the opportunity to play and that might mean playing games, either to limited capacity or zero capacity…

“We’re doing everything we can to keep them as safe as possible when they travel and we’re just hoping that we can play a season, because they’ve already missed (2020-21 season) of their careers, whether at university or in high school, and we didn’t want that to happen to them again.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sawa14