U SPORTS Athletes of the Week (#11): RMC’s Vautour, Toronto’s Gollish honoured
U SPORTS – TORONTO (U SPORTS) – Daniel Vautour of the RMC Paladins and Sasha Gollish from the Toronto Varsity Blues are the U SPORTS Male and Female Athletes of the Week for the period ending November 12, 2017.
It had been a winless start to the season for the RMC Paladins men’s hockey team, but thanks in large part to rookie goaltender Daniel Vautour, the team was able to notch their first victories. Not only did Vautour backstop the Paladins to their first two victories of the season, but did so against a top-ten squad in all of Canada. Going head to head with No. 7 UQTR, Vautour stood tall between the pipes in both the 2-1 (OT) win and the following 4-1 victory. The goaltender stopped 32 of 33 shots in the first game, and outdid himself in the second half of the back-to-back by stopping 44 of 45 shots. The first-year Arts student, on an individual note, tallied his first two career wins, but also secured RMC’s first wins over UQTR since 2005.
Sasha Gollish, the fifth-year veteran, won the women’s individual title to lead the Varsity Blues women’s cross country team to their first national banner since 2002 at the 2017 U SPORTS championship in Victoria, B.C. Appearing in her fourth U SPORTS cross country championship since being named rookie of the year in 2000, Gollish, a 35-year-old PhD in engineering education candidate, won the 8km race in 27:36.27. The 2015 Pan Am Games 1500m bronze medalist made a decisive move to build a gap on Claire Sumner and Branna MacDougall, both of Queen’s, in the final 1000m of the race. Gollish becomes the first Varsity Blue to win the individual national title since Megan Brown in 2009 and led U of T to their third national title in program history.
Male nominees:
CW: Russell Pennock, cross country, Calgary
OUA: Daniel Vautour, hockey, RMC (winner)
RSEQ: Yves Sikubwabo, cross country, Laval
AUS: Corey Bent, soccer, Cape Breton
Female nominees:
CW: Regan Yee, cross country, Trinity Western
OUA: Sasha Gollish, cross country, Toronto (winner)
RSEQ: Claudia Dubé-Trempe, soccer, Montréal
AUS: Savanna Jordan, cross country, Dalhousie
– Player bios courtesy U SPORTS member conferences
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U SPORTS is the national brand for university sports in Canada. Every year, over 12,000 student-athletes and 500 coaches from 56 universities vie for 21 national championships in 12 different sports. U SPORTS also provides higher performance international opportunities for Canadian student-athletes at Winter and Summer Universiades, as well as numerous world university championships. For further information, visit USPORTS.ca.
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