While most Ontario universities are ushering in the new academic year with a homecoming football game, Ontario’s colleges will start the year without varsity athletics.
It’s not for a lack of pride or pageantry, but rather a lack of staff during a support staff strike.
“A lot of the athletics directors in the schools that are affected are support staff workers,” said Josh Bell-Webster, spokesperson for the Ontario Colleges Athletics Association.
The OCAA represents about 4,000 college athletes across the province in men’s and women’s soccer, rugby, cross country, golf and women’s fastball.
Five members of the association’s seven-person executive board are on picket lines. They’re part of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents about 8,000 cleaners, food service staff and registration officers at 24 community colleges in the province.
The union failed to reach a deal with the Ontario Employer Council last Thursday, resulting in picket lines as the school’s sports seasons begin.
Regular season games were set to begin in men’s and women’s soccer on Friday, men’s rugby on Sunday, women’s fastball on Sept. 13 and women’s rugby on Sept. 14.
The OCAA will begin to postpone those games if the work stoppage continues past Thursday at noon.
“We’re just on a holding pattern until the end of the work stoppage,” said Bell-Webster.
jgreen@thespec.com
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