Pronghorns and Kodiaks excited to be back in action

By Lethbridge Herald on September 29, 2022.

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

There is a tremendous amount of excitement around Lethbridge post-secondary athletic departments as the new seasons begin and teams are getting back to normal game time since 2019.

“It’s nothing but excitement,” said Todd Caughlin, Lethbridge College Kodiaks manager of athletics and recreation services. “Of course there’s always that little bit of hesitation because you know you hear the news and you hear things here and there that just you almost want to retreat a little. But I got to tell you, the resilience and the excitement level around the student athletes, the coaching staff and the entire campus — it is there… it’s back to a point of feeling like you know we’re out of it, we’re turning the page and the Kodiaks are going to be back in action in playing for conference and national championships.”

The focus for this year is just to get student-athletes back and playing.

“We’ve had to deal with so many different restrictions,” said Caughlin. “So even like this past season, so the 2021-22 season, it was still a barrier and road blocks. So we didn’t have a true ACAC season per se. Yes we had conference championships and national championships. But it just didn’t have that ACAC feel.”

For virtually all colleges or universities, planning for this athletic season revolved around changes.

“We came out of the pandemic and this is every institution — this isn’t Kodiaks specific — but of course we try to pride ourselves in being very proactive in getting ahead of the game in any way we can because we are a competitive program and we’re proud of what we do and we’re going to do it the Kodiaks way,” he said.

“There’s changes in formats for each one of the sports, in the styles of play in the sense of playoffs. So this will be the first year going into, say, the sports of volleyball and basketball where it’s going to be a true north-south format and that hasn’t happened before my time because I’m going into year nine officially of being back.”

Soccer will see a different playoff format as four teams from each division will make playoffs with the addition of a play-in game.

LC will be hosting the year-end men’s and women’s soccer conference championships from Oct. 27-30 in Raymond.

The Kodiaks will be hosting the women’s basketball championship in the winter term from March 2-4, 2023.

Athletics is also looking at hosting its hall of fame 2022-2023 induction class in the winter term.

The University of Lethbridge echoed LC’s excitement to be back to normal.

“It’s nice to get back to full schedules, see a few different teams than just the Alberta schools that we saw last year,” said Eoin Colquhoun, U of L athletics manager of communications and operations. “We’re really excited to get back and have students on campus and hopefully get engaged with our events and what we’re doing.”

The Pronghorns will be hosting the Canada West Swimming Championship this year from Nov. 25-27.

“You know after what we saw our swimmers do last year, especially on the men’s side, it’s really exciting with Apollo Hess, Chris Alexander, Parker Brown and Reign Arden — they were right in that elite group of men’s swimmers in Canada West — and our women’s swimmers are coming along as well,” said Colquhoun.

“We’ve got a couple of young swimmers that Peter (Coach Schori) is excited about. And to have them in our home pool — again typically it’s only once every six years… So it gives us a chance to have people see Apollo swim at a high level at home which is exciting and you look at Chris was an individual medalist as well.”

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