Champlain postpones wall of champions celebration, Cougars fall to Limoilou
Champlain Regional College planned to honour another crop of former outstanding school athletes at this year’s wall of champions event, but the threat of COVID-19 forced organizers to postpone the second annual celebration.
Champlain immortalized three football championship winning teams from 1975, 1979, and 1981 at the inaugural event last fall. This year the school wanted to honour the first two hockey teams to bring home the gold.
“We’re trying to do more events like this and build on our wall of champions and invite everybody that was part of those championship years, but with Covid we had to put a stop to it because obviously we cannot get people together and we want it to be fun,” said Sylvain Laflamme, Champlain’s athletics director.
According to Laflamme, they have yet to decide on a new date. With so much up in the air, he said, the best the school can do is wait for the pandemic to subside before making a final decision on a date and time for 2021.
Before the project came to fruition in 2019, Champlain never had a spot within the building honouring past champions. They decided to pursue the wall of champions idea after months of deliberation with coaches, administration and former athletes.
“We wanted to do something, but we weren’t sure what to do and what was feasible because obviously we don’t have the same budgets as pro teams, so we’re trying to do something that could be fun,” Laflamme said.
He added that it’s important to recognize the school’s history and sports is a major part of that. Champlain is known for its excellence in several sports, but especially in football. The division one team claimed another Bol d’or championship last season.
Roughly 60 alumni showed up to last year’s event, Laflamme continued, and it felt as though they had never truly left campus. It was as if they had just won their championships, he explained, everyone was reminiscing about the glory days.
However, postponing the annual event acted as another reminder that there is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the immediate future of sports and large gatherings. The cegep is currently drawing up a schedule for the hockey season.
But with a number of Quebec regions moving into code orange and Montreal and Quebec City flirting dangerously close to code red, it seems more and more unlikely to happen. Although the football team did manage to get a game in last week and hopes of another this weekend.
“There’s one game planned for this coming Saturday at Triolet, but we’re still not sure if it’ll happen because some regions are turning red, so that might put an end to it,” said Laflamme.
Champlain Cougars head coach JeanFrançois Joncas told The Record that while the team’s first game against the Limoilou Titans didn’t go as planned on the scoreboard, they respected all of the health and safety measures on and off the field.
“It’s a bit different than what we’re used to but if that’s what it takes then I guess the kids were willing to do it and for the most part the kids are really good with those protocols,” Joncas said.
There’s a lot of protocols to follow, he continued, the school can only allow 26 people on a bus, so they needed to take two buses. They took everyone’s body temperature, coaches, players and other personnel, prior to getting on the bus and before the game.
The players constantly washed or disinfected their hands and wore a mask any time they entered Limoilou’s sports complex. Whenever the team finished a drive, they rushed off the field and got sprayed with disinfectant by a staff member on the sideline.
The Cougars ultimately lost 37-0 to a more mature football team, the Titans lost six players compared to Champlain’s 25. According to Joncas, Limoilou, which is in Quebec City, has been practicing since early August, compared to Champlain starting at the end of August.
“It’s a learning experience for those young guys and we’re back practicing this week,” he said. “It’s going to be tough to play teams now because a lot of areas are going red, so most likely it’ll be hard to play anyone.”