SFU Pink Leafs staying quiet about modifications to ladies's soccer program

Article content material

The SFU Pink Leafs have parted methods with Annie Hamel as their ladies’s soccer head coach, though the college isn’t offering particulars.

Article content material

Hamel, who had been accountable for this system since 2014, and assistant coach Anna Picarelli have been taken off the roster web page on the SFU web site earlier this week. SFU director of media relations and public affairs Braden McMillan defined through e mail: “Resulting from privateness issues, I can’t touch upon employment issues. Nevertheless, I can verify that Carlo Basso would be the interim head coach for the approaching season.”

Article content material

A Could e mail from McMillan acknowledged that SFU had employed North Vancouver lawyer Sarah Chamberlain, who focuses on office conflicts, to look into points with the ladies’s soccer program earlier than including that “the college takes complaints of bullying and harassment very critically.”

SFU athletic director Theresa Hanson acknowledged in an e mail earlier this yr that “we’re conscious of issues raised by members of the SFU ladies’s varsity soccer group,” and that the group “will likely be beneath path of different members of the athletics employees whereas we work to know extra.”

Article content material

Article content material

Not one of the emails talked about Hamel nor Picarelli. Hamel had not responded to a request for an interview as of Friday afternoon.

SFU is slated to start out its season subsequent Thursday with an exhibition recreation versus the Fraser Valley Cascades at SFU. The Pink Leafs have been supposed to start out the season with a visit to Norway, however that was cancelled. The varsity’s males’s group did play video games in Norway this week.

Basso is a former SFU star participant — he was named SFU’s male athlete of the yr in 2012 — and was appointed an assistant coach with the ladies’s group in 2019. He coaches membership with within the Coquitlam Metro-Ford system. SFU recruited six gamers from Metro-Ford for this coming season.

Hamel’s group completed 5-7-7 general and 4-5-5 in Nice Northwest Athletic Convention play within the season that wrapped up final November, pushing their file with Hamel on the helm to 47-75-14 general and 39-55-8 in convention.

Article content material

The varsity did point out Hanson’s latest departure publicly. Hanson, who had been the college’s senior director of athletics and recreation since 2015, and SFU “have come to mutual settlement that the time is true for a change in path, inside Athletics and Recreation,” in keeping with an open letter from vice provost, college students and worldwide Rummana Khan Hemani posted on the SFU athletics web site Aug. 2. Hanson left her position that day, in keeping with the letter.

SFU has but to announce their subsequent steps in changing Hanson.

Together with soccer points, SFU had come beneath scrutiny throughout Hanson’s look ahead to shutting down the soccer program in April, despite the fact that the group had simply accomplished spring camp in preparation for the 2023 season. Gamers and alumni complained that they weren’t consulted in regards to the determination forward of time.

Article content material

This system dates again to 1965.

After a public pushback from the gamers, alumni and the soccer neighborhood together with B.C. Lions proprietor Amar Doman, SFU agreed to nominate Bob Copeland, who’s a senior vice-president with McLaren World Sports activities Options, as a particular adviser to “discover choices for the way forward for soccer at SFU.” His full report is anticipated in September.

SFU soccer was slated to lose affiliation standing with the Texas-based Lone Star Convention after the 2023 season, and Hanson stated that this system was working out of choices for locations to play and didn’t wish to extend what she felt was an inevitable shutdown. SFU had moved all its groups to NCAA Div. II from the Canada West Convention of U Sports activities in 2010. They’ve struggled to compete in soccer for the reason that transfer, going 4-63 within the final seven campaigns.

Article content material

Hanson stated that the college’s different packages needed to remain within the NCAA and he or she didn’t consider that the soccer group can be permitted again in Canada West by itself. Gamers and alumni complained that she didn’t a make formal software.

[email protected]

Summer season subscription sale: Our in-depth journalism is feasible because of the assist of our subscribers. For a restricted time, you will get full on-line entry to the Vancouver Solar and The Province, together with the Nationwide Publish and 13 different Canadian information websites, for simply $40 for one yr or $1 per week for 52 weeks. Assist our journalism by subscribing as we speak: The Vancouver Solar | The Province.

Article content material