The Briercrest Athletic Department recently announced a new format for their annual alumni reunions during the 2011-12 season.

In contrast to past years where all five ACAC teams hosted one combined alumni weekend in September, they are switching to a new tournament format with each sport hosting on a separate weekend.

Men’s and women’s volleyball will kick things off with their tournament weekend being on September 9th and 10th, followed by men’s and women’s basketball on September 16th and 17th, and then men’s hockey will host their tournament in February on the 3rd and 4th.

The reason for the switch is to allow for more opportunity for alumni to play games and to encourage more participation.

“We are excited about the new tournament format as it makes it more beneficial for our alumni,” said Briercrest Athletic Director Stan Peters. “We want former players to feel like it is worth their while to come out for a weekend and know that they are going to have lots of opportunity to play against both past and current teams in a full tournament. We have reached full capacity in our current format and in order to expand opportunities for alumni to participate, we have made the move to tournament style.”

Briercrest athletics is looking for past team captains, team leaders or other players who want to take the lead on organizing their own team for the tournaments.

“We hope this new format generates some buzz amongst our alumni and motivates them to put together teams to come out and compete for the weekend,” Associate Athletic Director Nigel Mullan said. “We are looking for past players step up and recruit their teammates to make their own teams for the tournaments. It should be a lot of fun and we are looking forward to a great time of reconnecting old teammates and connecting them with our current athletes through some fun competition!”

The head coaches for each Clipper team will be running the tournaments for their sport, so alumni are asked to contact the coach of their sport for more details and to register for their weekend.  You can register as a team or as an individual (individuals will be placed on teams from their era). The contacts are as follows:

Women’s Volleyball – Nolan Weinmaster – nweinmaster@briercrest.ca
Men’s Volleyball – Nigel Mullan – nmullan@briercrest.ca
Women’s Basketball – Chad Romanuk – cromanuk@briercrest.ca
Men’s Basketball – Rod Adrian – radrian@briercrest.ca
Men’s Hockey – Terry Dyck – tdyck@briercrest.ca

Alumni need to contact the head coach from their sport by August 19th, 2011 to confirm their registration.