NORTH BAY — The Laurentian University cuts have sent a ripple effect across the north and around the country.
Laurentian University announced last week that it is cutting its hockey and swimming Voyageurs teams because of the school's financial woes.
The moves are part of the university's restructuring after filing for creditor protection this winter.
For North Bay's Evan Kilroy, a second-year law student at Laurentian University and a member of the Laurentian Swim Team, the news did not really come as a huge surprise.
The former competitive chess player recognized the warning signs a few months ago that his swim program was facing an eventual "Checkmate."
See related: Laurentian University axes hockey, swimming amid financial problems
That's why back in January, well before the situation completely unravelled this April, Kilroy started looking into transferring to a New Brunswick school.
"We have been hearing bad news about Laurentian for a long time," said Kilroy.
"Every two weeks we seemed to be getting an email about some sort of catastrophe or some issue going on at Laurentian."
Kilroy, who has already put the transfer process to another school, felt betrayed by Laurentian.
"I think the overall sentiment is a feeling of betrayal rather than shock with the administration," he said candidly.
"Our team has worked really hard to stay together and everyone put in a lot of work so we could train. We tried our best to make things work and to get to the end of the year to get this kind of news is the most upsetting part for us."
But Kilroy is not the only local swimmer who is weighing options after the swim team's cut.
Leah Dawson swam with Kilroy with the Titans Swim team in North Bay for years. The first-year Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology student at LU was stunned when she got an email from the coach with the bad news that the Varsity Swimming Team at Laurentian was no more.
"My first thought was that no, this is not real, I am dreaming because they paid for us to swim all of the first semester and most of the second semester so why would they decide to cut us when they spent all this money this year," wonders Dawson.
While Dawson's Kinesiology program survived this layer of Laurentian cuts, she is also looking to transfer elsewhere in hopes of continuing on as a student-athlete.
"I am only in my first year and I never got to go to OUAs or go to Divisionals or swim in our pool," noted Dawson about the team that trained in Val Caron this season.
"I immediately thought I want to continue swimming at the OUA level and experience OUAs and Divisionals because I had grown up at club swimming watching all these older swimmers who were role models for me go through the OUA swimming route and that was something I knew I wanted to do."
Now Dawson, along with a handful of other teammates are looking at schools like Brock to potentially transfer so they can continue as student-athletes.
She credits her Laurentian coach Phil Parker for helping her find another potential swim program.
For 18-year-old Brody Marietti, the Laurentian cuts were a "double whammy."
The North Bay Titans swimmer was hoping to swim with the Voyageurs and enroll in Environmental Science in the fall of 2021. Now, both his program and his potential swim team are gone.
"I was coming back home from work and I really did not think my program was going to get shut down," said Marietti, whose father attended LU.
Marietti and a classmate at Algonquin were planning to room together at LU but that all changed.
"We were about to dorm together and this kind of changes both of our plans. He was shocked, I was shocked, everyone was shocked that this whole thing went down," he said.
Now Marietti is wondering whether to take a year off or potentially go to Trent University in Peterborough to take Environmental Science. However, there is no swim team at Trent.
"I was really hoping to keep swimming and keep competing and now it is not looking too good," he said.
"It sucks."
Kilroy, who has experienced competition at the OUA level before COVID-19, feels for his former Titans teammates.
"I was excited for kids I know like Brody and Leah to show up for the team and see what it is like and obviously that is not going to happen and there is a real feeling of uncertainty. No one has a guarantee that their program will stick around, or their professor is going to be there," said Kilroy.
Darren Turcotte is the Nipissing Lakers varsity women's hockey coach.
He sympathizes and has dealt with hockey players who had their teams get cut.
Turcotte signed two girls from the University of Lethbridge hockey team that was cut last fall and he admits that he is already in discussion with a pair of Laurentian Voyageurs players who he says may want to travel down Highway 17 to join him with the Nipissing University Lakers team next fall.
"I can only imagine how difficult it must be on student-athletes," Turcotte told BayToday.
"These men and women spend countless hours with their academics and doing everything they can, on and off their fields of play, to represent the school in a positive way.
"All we can do as a program is try and show support to those student-athletes that are looking for different avenues to continue their education all the while being able to continue playing the sport that they love."
