.‘w It seems a short time ince we last discussed .P.E.I. sport through a adre column for tempus has. ugited celerissme as Father elly would NQT_say and we re now facing another sea on with high hopes.. Wel-- ome back to those who are eturning and a special reeting to those newcomers ho, we trust, will now ecome Panther rooters for ife. Looking back brief— y, we enjoyed the Awards 'inner and offer congratu— ations to Art Laffin and anet Trainor who were des— gnated as " Athletes of he Year ". The Panther :ooster Club, with hard iriving Posty Connolly ex— orting them on, was quite :ctive. Their‘dinner at onty Hall was fantastic. ormer collegiate greats :nd still prominent pro- essionals Jim Foley, Billy acMillan, and Alan MacAdam eamed well with M.C. Danny allivan to give enter- .ainment'and information hat local sports fans will ong remember. Several oeople, for reasons best eft unmentioned, have but azy recollections of the latter part of the evening, .ut that is another story. e club also sponsored a 'anther Pace at the Char— lottetown Driving Park that urther enriched their fund. lhe money raised goes to- ' ard providing athletic .cholarships to two play— ‘rs on th-basketball, foot— nall, and hockey teams, ay their projects prosper! ootball - Graduations and; other departures took away a lot of the strength that we -njoyed in recent years and messimists forcast a drab season. :waever, with 17 eterans returning, and a .ealth of talent trying out let the 16 positions that ill have to be filleggby ookies, Coach Hilton Seems quite cheerful. To pick a / few_9fgthose remaining who,~ , - 1 . t” a . _‘ p , 232‘ a u. 1.: (- . g. b ‘1 9» look talk loin-0y Place lJ by virtue of experience, will have to take on a big gload we'll have to mention Mike Jones, Dave Lidstone, Shane Dowling, Roy Taylor, Mike Lyriotokis, and Howie Adams. With the departure of Grant Canvin the Q.B. position is wide open and three are trying to fill Grant's shoes ( no mean feet, if you'll take a pun. ) They are Dino Puiia, last year's backup, John Paul MacIntyre who was Q.B. for last year's champ— ions, Colonel Gray, and Colin Anderson who filled this position for the Verdun Maple Leafs in the Ontario— Quebec Junior League last year. We look for an en— tertaining team with a wealth of good receivers and strong quarterbacking .. ... lacking the crystal ball that we smashed last and haven't been able to get repaired, we are wary of making any other pre—u dictiOn other than that the Panthers will be in there trying for’60 minutes every game and we hope their fans will give their support for the same period. If there are enough fans to pay the way, the Student Union will probably arrange a bus to the opening game in Freder— icton on Sept. 27. That game will tell a lot. Soccer - Coach Mulligan started his hopefuls with their first practice on Monday. In as much as this is only their second year of league play, Vincie is work- hard at building a team and feels he has a much stronger aggregation than last year. His troups open their season at U.N.B. on Sept. 19 and will play their first home game against perrenial con— tender Memorial on the 27th., Basketball - We have been told that last year's Pan- thers were the most improved team in College Basketball. After an excellent showing- against Saint Marylswand “ ‘3 ffififi $XV5 a vi 5 Va‘ ‘ « “YULW‘M'LXSVB.'sWe’fio‘dt'cfo'S-Vfo'nfi'ffl'mlll ;. .4; ’ . - ( March's playoffs, the usuAlv- 1y critical — of - U.P.E.I. — teams Halifax press com— mented that we were one year and a really tall player a— way from having a real con— tender. Well, Gary Heald ( who, by the way, was cho- sen as last yaer's coach of the year ) now has that year under his belt and, we~ think, more Than a really tall player. We'll miss Mike and Phil Connolly but we have from last year— Jamie Ballem, Art Laffin, Tom Hibbert, Butch Postma, and Anson McLaughlin. A— mong the newcomers we have 6'7" Tom Kappos who was t leading scorer for Vanier College of Montreal last year, 6'4" Gary Young from Fredericton who was on N.B. '3 Canada Games Team, 6'4" Lloyd Pullen from Montreal who was on the gold metal winning Quebec team at the Canada Games, 6'2" Mark Vickers, who was also on that Quebec team, 6'2" Mike Willins from Toronto, and Kevin Feighery, 6'1", who was a teammate of Panther veteran Art Laffin at Mer— rimac College in Connecti— cut. A number of Island prospects, including Colin Mac Adam from Colonel Gray also have a good chance to make the team. The out— look is optimistic and, hopefully, this team can give competition to any college team in the coun- try. There will be lots of entertainment as they will have the toughest schedule in Island basketball his— tory. Last year's system of splitting the teams in— to two divisions has been scrapped, and we'll See all the Atlantic teams here. First home game will be ,1 with U.N.B. on Nov. 28. Hockey — Last year we fin; ished 7th in the 10 team league with a 7—11 record. Actually, we certainly con— sidered ourselves much bet- xter than this record indi— cates. We lost several cliffhangers ..... we played 5 overtime contests and lost all of them. If we had 222 all of these (or even 3) we would have been right in there for the "playoffs and anything could then happen. This year we'll certainly miss Donny Brown, Gene Power, Louie Doherty, Shawn MacIsaac, and V.P. Tom Hayward. ever, we'll have lots of ne faces with a great deal of promise .... rugged Larry Arsenault from the O'Leary Maroons, defenceman Daniel Lessard from Junior A, Shawzg How—‘ / . ' a ,7 I * 1 The Cadre, Sept. 9,1975, page 9 Previews » _ Football f Suffers; Basketball rMount Allison in last Imptoves nigan, Charlottetown's hard shot Wilfred MacDonald, who was in Junior A in Montreal last winter, goalkeeper John Mitchell from Farming— ton State College in Massa— chuSetts who was his i‘ league's M.V.P. last year, forward Luc Champagne who has played outstanding hock— ey for the Laval Nationals and Sherbrooke's Junior A teams .... also forward Ray O'Donnell who was a high scorer for St. Thomas .... Coach Kane also has several new prospects to compete for positions .... anyone who saw last year's Junior A playoffs will realize there is no shortage of good prospects in Island players so we have just mentioned some newcomers. Returning will be 14 of last year's players, in— cluding the 6 top goal— getters and both goal— keepers- A big item of interest is that all home games will be played in the Charlotte— town Forum .... we don't know the arrangements, but we do think it is a forward step and should go far in cementing relationships be— tween the community and the University. If there is one thing that can attract the local citizenry, it is good hockey .... a commodity that the M.I.H.L. has in great quantity. Last year, as we left the press box in Halifax, as a farewell, we said to those remaining, " See you at the playoffs next year .... IN CHARLOTTETOWN!=" how about it, Jack! Special footnote - Jock Talk is indebted to newcomers Gordon MacAlpine and John Neville who, this year, will be handling the publicity for Panther teams. They _performed this function for Vanier College last year and we think will do an out- standing job for us this year. '