November 25,1997

Panther

The Cadre

Sports briefs

Panthers make winning their mandate this weekend

By Billy McQueen All Panther sports teams won last weekend.

The volleyball panthers played at home and managed to take two matches against UBC. The made a jump in the AUAA ,and are currently placed sixth out of ten in the AUAA rankings.

The hockey Panthers played at home last weekend as well, with most people ended up talking more about the fight than the two wins. The Panthers beat Acadia 5-3 last Saturday night. The Acadia Axemen were pretty frustrated after UPEI took advantage of several mistakes. It was nice to see the Panthers playing like a team after several disappointing home game appearances. The fight at the end of the Acadia game resulted in several players receiving game misconducts: Dave Mitchell, Jeremy Pierce, Gerry Lanigan, Sean Rowe and Jonathon Murphy. Murphy and Pierce were given 10 game suspensions and are in the process of appealing the decisions. Team Captain Todd Walker is experiencing some back problems and is unsure of his return. The Dalhousie game on the Sunday was just as intense as the Saturday game with a Panthers win again 6-4.

The women’s basketball Panthers remain unbeaten this season. The girls won the double header against UCCB last weekend 72-63 on Saturday and 78-61 on Sunday. The men’s basketball team split their games against UBC by winning 84-75 on Saturday and losing 71-61 on Sunday. The girls command first place in their division while the boys are tied for second place in the AUAA standings.

The men’s hockey team play at home twice this week Wed 26th of November against Mt.A. at the Civic Centre and Saturday, November 29th against STU. The men’s and women’s basketball teams play Dalhousie on Friday, November 28th at the Sports Centre. Hope to see you at the games.

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Panther bench looks on at a recent brawl involving UPEI/Acadia — photo courtesy of B. McQueen

Suspensions and injuries plague panther hockey team

By Billy McQueen

A long list of suspensions were dealt after last week's Panther hockey game between ACA and UPEI. The worries for the Panthers now are obviously how this incident will affect

their season. Those who were involved in the ACA game misconducts

were: Dave Mitchell, Jeremy Pierce, Gerry Lanigan, Sean Rowe and Jonathon Murphy. All of these players were given at least one game suspension, with Jonathon Murphy and Jeremy Pierce managing to top the suspension contest with 10 game suspensions each.

Jeremy Pierce recalls that the fight initially started when “they upended one of our players near the bench...and tempers really flared because of an incident that happened in the second period.” The main reason Pierce was disciplined was due to his being the first to leave the bench in the brawl. Pierce mentions that his teammate, Jonathon Murphy, was “tagged as an instigator and aggressor in a fight in which he never took his gloves off.”

The Panthers must now also deal with their top points leader, Mike Harding, being suspended for three games after the road trip to UDM. In addition to this problem the Captain of the team, Todd Walker, is currently experiencing back prob- lems. Hopefully, the remaining Hockey Panthers can pull together a few wins while waiting for suspension appeal results. Hopefully the boys will keep the suspensions down before they have to start scouting the intramural teams for new players.