Toe to Toe - University Soccer exposure
Two combatants from Cogeco’s Sports Firing line Frank “The Toe” Caruso (left), and Chris Dawson (right) now take their arguments to the web with a new BayToday.ca weekly sports opinion feature called, “Toe to Toe.” Photo by Lee Anne Dawson.
Two combatants from Cogeco’s Sports Firing line Frank “The Toe” Caruso (left), and Chris Dawson (right) now take their arguments to the web with a new BayToday.ca weekly sports opinion feature called, “Toe to Toe.” Photo by Lee Anne Dawson.
The Nipissing Lakers Men's soccer team finished a great run last weekend bowing out to the 4th ranked team in the country from the University of Toronto. The question is did you even know about it and who's to blame for their lack of media coverage in North Bay?
Chris:
"Clearly the media in this town does have to take some responsibility for this (that certainly includes myself). I honestly didn’t have any idea they were playing such a crucial game against Laurentian two weekends ago and I only found out about it on the BayToday.ca sports response board!
"That’s when I got off my rear end and did a couple of stories about the team as they headed into the playoffs because I realized this is really a big deal.
"Personally, I feel bad because when I was going to the University of Montana I worked on a College sports show and did stories on University athletes in golf, volleyball, basketball and football. But we in Canada overall don’t have as big of a connection with University sports as they do in the United States. That’s just obvious.
"But on the other hand, the University has to take some blame for this too. If they are not publicizing their sport or not sending out press releases until two days after the fact, then you cannot expect most media outlets to cover it. It’s old news by then.
"The men’s soccer team at Nipissing is arguably the most high profile sports team in the city and they really get next to no media coverage. The men’s and women’s squads from Laurentian get plenty of media coverage in Sudbury; a place that still has an OHL team to compete with.
"It’s a challenge because of the timing with NDA football and the Skyhawks but still the team deserves better and both sides (media and university) need to pull up there socks and get them the coverage and exposure in the future."
Frank:
"Well first of all Chris, you are right about one thing, the one thing is that the Nipissing Lakers, if you take a look at University sports around this country, football, basketball, hockey, the next one is soccer.
"Every year we run into this problem, it’s during the start of the NDA football season, the start of the Skyhawks season. Everybody talks about the Skyhawks and NDA football. But let’s be honest here the competitiveness of the University game and where it is across Canada and the coverage of it is extraordinary, not so much soccer, but we don’t see any coverage at all in this city and I blame the media outlets. I can’t believe the media outlets don’t even cover soccer. I went to the game when they beat Laurentian and snuck into the playoffs. You know how many media people I saw? Maybe one.
"That breaks your heart as a soccer fan number one but more so as an alumni of Nipissing University which I am. It breaks your heart to see finally everything that the soccer program has worked for to get into the athletic department, and have a feature sport in this city and yet our own media doesn’t cover it. So who do I blame for it, I blame the media because they know when the soccer games are and nobody is out there to cover them."
Toe to Toe can be seen every Friday on BayToday.ca
