The rivalry between two northern Ontario schools will be amped up this fall as Nipissing University and Laurentian University have come together to create the ‘705 Challenge Cup’ this off-season.
The competition will take place in all 12 meetings in the various OUA sports this coming season.
The two northern universities have long been adversaries on the soccer pitch, competing yearly for the ‘Riley Gallo Cup’, named for the late son of Laurentian women’s soccer coach Rob Gallo, but with the addition of men’s and women’s basketball and hockey to both schools in recent years, the timing was right to build on the friendly Northern rivalry.
The ‘705 Challenge Cup’ will be comprised of all 12 regular season games between the Lakers and the Voyageurs in the sports of men’s and women’s basketball, hockey and soccer. The soccer teams will still compete for the coveted ‘Riley Gallo Cup’ but those games will also be included in the overall scoring for the ‘705 Challenge Cup’.
The scoring each year for the new hardware will consist of the overall win-loss record between the 2 institutions. In the event of a tie in the head-to-head record, plus-minus will be used as a tie-breaker. One caveat to the plus-minus calculation will be dividing the point differential of the basketball games by 10.
This will ensure that, for example, a potential 20 point win by one team only counts as +/- 2 and does not skew the overall calculation.
The first games towards the ‘705 Challenge Cup’ go this Sunday, September 11th when Laurentian hosts Nipissing in women’s and men’s soccer with kickoffs at 12 p.m. and 2:15 p.m., respectively.
The final game in this year’s competition will be Friday, February 10th when the Lakers women’s and men’s basketball teams welcome the Voyageurs with tip-offs going at 6pm and 8pm, respectively.
