U Sports Football Report (Week 4)
University sports is a funny thing as the success and failure of a team over an extended period of time has everything to do with recruiting.
Unlike professional sports teams can’t simply go out and get the best players and fill the holes that they have with a big signing.
Instead, they need to convince high school students that their program is the best place to be for that player.
It can be done in many different ways as some players want a path to professional football and some just want to win championships.
There are others that are simply using football as a way to get a good education that they can then use after their life in football.
A coach has to figure out what players are influenced by what aspect of a team and try to sell that player.
One thing is always going to help and that is winning as teams that win generally find it easier to convince the best players to attend their schools.
Everyone wants to play for a championship team and the best players are heavily recruited by those big teams and often find a home with those big teams.
It can lead to a big issue in the league as the best teams continue to stay great because they constantly get the best players.
It makes it very hard to for teams that have sat in the basement to recruit because great players don’t always want to go to a team that isn’t going to win.
There are plenty of teams that have experienced those issues but none have had the same path to walk as the Waterloo Warriors.
The Warriors have struggled to be a top team in the OUA and the country as they have been playing football since 1957 with only two Yates Cups and no Vanier Cup appearances.
Since 2001 they have not had a winning record and things only got worse in 2010 when the program was rocked.
That is when it was discovered that a Warriors player was in possession of steroids launching an investigation into the program.
Three players tested positive after the investigation and the school decided to cancel the 2010 season.
The team missed one entire season and they essentially had to start over from scratch with no recruits and no momentum from before.
It was taking a team that might have had something to build on and sending them right to the bottom of the standings again.
The question was whether or not they could ever recover from that lost season and for a number of years they clearly couldn’t.
They remained at the bottom of the OUA and they couldn’t seem to find a way out of the basement.
That seems to be changing this year as the Warriors are one of the top teams in the province after four weeks.
It has been a massive surprise for everyone as nobody thought that the Warriors would be back in the hunt anytime soon.
There was never really any indication that things were turning around as 2016 saw them finish 0-8 at the end of the season.
Then they came out this year and put everyone on notice when they put up 54 points against the Windsor Lancers.
It was still only against the Lancers who are not necessarily the biggest competition in the league but are a team the Warriors needed to beat to stay out of the basement.
After two straight no-win seasons, the Warriors needed to get their wins against the other teams stuck in the basement of the OUA.
The next two weeks were much of the same as the Warriors were able to take two more wins against the York Lions and Toronto Varsity Blues.
Both wins were important for the Warriors but again they weren’t necessarily against the best competition and so not many knew what to think of the win streak.
No matter what it was more wins than they had had in the past two seasons combined and things were clearly turning things around.
Their biggest test came in Week 4 when they took on the Carleton Ravens who have been a great team since they restarted their program.
The Warriors proved that they can step up in competition though as they took the win in a tight battle staying undefeated after four weeks.
Carleton is still not among the best teams this year and so the big test of the season will come next week when the Warriors take on Laurier, who are right behind them in the standings.
If the Warriors can take down the Golden Hawks it seems like things will have taken a big turn for one of the struggling teams in the province.
With four games left in the regular season, the Warriors are trying to get their first playoff appearance since 2003.
If they can it will be one of the biggest surprises in the country this year and could also change the fate of this program for the foreseeable future.
The Sport Addiction 