Sports

The Golden Bears hockey team are on the hunt for a diamond in the rough.

Most volleyball players feel at home under the neon lights of a gym, with their feet firmly planted on the hardcourt. But Mike Plantinga doesn’t mind sinking his feet into the sand.

The smell of evergreen is pungent as Canada’s national volleyball teams prepare for the upcoming summer Olympics with rosters chock full of former and current Bears and Pandas athletes.

Being nominated to host the 2013 and 2014 CIS National Track and Field championships will give the Golden Bears and Pandas a rare opportunity to earn a national championship on home turf in upcoming years.

When Marcus Johnstone arrived on the pitch for his first day of the Golden Bears soccer team’s training camp last summer he had everything going for him. An athletic, albeit undersized striker, Johnstone was hailed as an integral piece of the team’s line-up even before he arrived for his rookie year as a Golden Bear.

When most basketball players hear the term ‘press’, they think of the offensive basketball strategy. When two former CIS hard-court stars, Scott Gordon and Gavin Fedorak, hear it, they think sandwiches. Pressed sandwiches, that is.

He’s been called hockey’s quiet revolutionary, a leader, and an innovator. But he won’t be called a Hockey Hall of Fame inductee, at least not this year.