Badgers women’s hoops squad named OUA team of the year
Rao earns coaching honour as conference hands out awards
A women’s basketball team that made Brock University history by earning the silver medal at the Canadian championships has just added to that history. On Wednesday, the Badgers were recognized as the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) female team of the year, becoming the first Brock team to receive the honour.
The award also recognized the team’s work in the community and commitment to promoting basketball in Niagara. In addition to volunteering for the Brock Badgers Scorers Academy, the players ran basketball camps and assisted in the Wise Girls 3-on-3 Basketball Charity Tournament.
Mike Rao, who led the Badgers to a program-best 27-8 record in his second year as head coach, was selected as the conference’s male coach of the year.
“I’m humbled by this award,” he said. “It was an amazing season for everyone involved. We’ll carry these memories with us for a lifetime.”
It was the fourth coaching award for Rao this season. He was selected as women’s basketball coach of the year by both U SPORTS and the OUA and was honoured as Brock’s coach of the year when the university livestreamed a virtual awards gala online.
Brock’s quest for its first national title in women’s hoops ended in an 82-64 loss to top seed Saskatchewan at the U SPORTS championships in Ottawa.
Graduating senior Melissa Tatti, the OUA’s player of the year, said the Badgers kept proving naysayers wrong after defeating three higher seeds — Windsor, Western and Ryerson — to take the conference title for the first time since 1983. “I think what wasn’t talked about enough was that we deserved to be at nationals,” she said. “Even after winning OUAs, when we beat Calgary (in their game at nationals), the announcers were still saying we won off of luck. But every game we kept proving the non-believers wrong. It honestly fed fuel to the fire.”
Brock clinched a berth in the U SPORTS Final 8 in Ottawa with a 69-65 upset of host Western in the conference semifinals, and the Badgers defeated Ryerson 84-71, also on the road, to win the Critelli Cup for the first time.
The OUA title was the second in program history and the first since the championship trophy was renamed in 2016 in honour of longtime Brock coach and assistant athletic director Chris Critelli.
Critelli was an assistant on Pat Woodburn’s coaching staff when Brock won the OUA championship in 1983. She went on to lead the Badgers to 393 victories and six division titles before retiring from coaching to become the university’s assistant athletic director.
Wrestlers Hannah Taylor and Clayton Pye, Brock’s 2019-20 female and male athletes of the year, respectively, were nominated for the same honours at the conference level.
Toronto swept the individual athlete awards with Lucia Stafford, in cross country and track and field, the top female athlete for 2019-20 and hockey player David Thomson the top male athlete.
Taylor and Pye were among the standouts of a wrestling team that hosted nationals in February and won the overall title for the seventh consecutive year. It was the 20th title for the men’s program and 10th for the women.
“Our student-athletes, coaches, support staff and the entire university have a lot of be proud of,” associate director of Brock Sports Emily Allan said. “We were nominated in four of the six major award categories. “And I think that speaks volumes about the kind of student-athletes we recruit and the competitive Badgers that we are.”