The University of Regina Rams opened the 2013 Canada West season last Friday with a 40-33 loss to the University of Saskatchewan Huskies. The loss, in and of itself, was no big deal. The Huskies, after all, were ranked #9 in the nation heading into the season and were playing at home, while the Rams, having graduated 20 players from last year’s team, are in a bit of a rebuilding mode.
The game was a bit of a good news/bad news scenario for the Rams. The bad news came in the form of a slow start that saw the Huskies race out to a 32-7 half-time lead. The good news is that the Rams enjoyed a strong second half, and were actually able to tie the game at 33-33 early in the fourth quarter before the Huskies scored a TD with six minutes left to secure the victory.
Tonight at Mosaic Stadium at 7 p.m. the Rams open the home portion of their schedule with a game against the Calgary Dinos. In pre-season polls, the Dinos were ranked #3 in the country, and last Saturday they scored a 41-31 victory over the UBC Thunderbirds in Vancouver, so if the bad news Rams show up it could be a long night for head coach Frank McCrystal and his crew. But if the good news Rams from the second half of the Huskie tilt show up it should be a hard fought game.
With the Rams facing another game against the Dinos in Calgary on Oct. 18, and home encounter with the Huskies to close out the season on Oct. 26, they can ill afford a loss to the Dinos to start the season at 0W-2L. But the fact remains that four of the Rams eight games in 2013 are against the two elite teams in Canada West so they definitely have an uphill battle this year.
And if art is more your speed, there’s an opening reception and artist talk tonight at 6 p.m. for the exhibition The Substitutes and the Absence. It’s by a Toronto-based collective called Z’otz*. For almost a decade, collective members have met weekly to collaborate on drawings. By joining forces in that way they depart from the traditional model of creativity in our society tied to the individual auteur or genius that French film director/critic Francois Truffaut outlined in the 1950s.
