As coach of the defending champions of AUS football, it’s safe to say St. F.X. X-Men coach Gary Waterman was caught off guard by what his boss had to tell him.
There’s going to be a change for homecoming weekend this year, athletic director Leo MacPherson explained to the coach. Instead of the football game being played in the prime Saturday afternoon slot as it has for, oh, 65 years or so, women’s rugby is being given centre stage and football moved to Friday night.
"I give Gary Waterman a lot of credit,” MacPherson said. “At first, (he asked) why the change, but he understood the rationale behind it, he was very supportive. And Friday night's a great time slot, we have Bishop's here this weekend."
This year marks 50 years of female sports at X. It’s also another year in the dynasty of Mike Cavanagh, coach of the X-Women who won their sixth national championship last fall, and have taken 20 of the past 21 conference titles.
Still. Mess with homecoming?
"There's a risk associated with making changes to any formula we have for homecoming weekend,” admitted MacPherson. “But, overwhelmingly, the feedback that I've received is people are very supportive of the change for this year. Homecoming at St. F.X. ... is a huge event for our university, wildly popular with our alumni and certainly one of the best weekends of the entire year, so we review it annually."
MacPherson said “the school’s most successful program,” one that’s in the same stratosphere as Carleton's men's basketball, deserves to be featured at homecoming and that the players are thrilled by the honour.
"They would often play on homecoming weekends but it was Friday evening, and we would typically on Friday evenings in previous homecomings hold our large welcome home dinner. That was a big dinner with 400 to 500 attendees, so that was running head to head against the women's rugby game. This year our homecoming schedule has been completely revamped, for all activities, not just the varsity events," said the AD, who expects the stands at Oland Stadium to be full for the rugby game. "It's going to be great for a lot of our alumni who may never have had the opportunity to see women's rugby."
Coach Cavanagh described the decision by the university as “daring” and “pioneering.”
"It's probably never happened in North America before, that a football game was pushed aside for a female sport, never mind rugby," he said. "There was talk about it last spring, and when it was brought up to me I never thought it would happen. It happened and we're very honoured to be put in this position. The girls are really looking forward to playing our rivals, Acadia, hopefully in front of a full house."
Cavanagh said he’s not sure the significance of the occasion has sunk in for his players yet, and might not until they take the field in front of a homecoming crowd.
"It's going to be eye-opening for them. It's going to be a little bit of pressure - playing Acadia is pressure, never mind on homecoming,” he said. “Acadia is a good program, they were beating us at halftime last weekend ... and I'm sure Acadia is going to want to come up here and do everything they can to ruin it for us. You always like to go another team's homecoming and beat them."
St. Francis Xavier doesn’t have many alumni as loyal as Ed McHugh. A class president (’79) and on the school’s alumni board for 19 years, McHugh has only missed homecoming four times in 40 years. And he’s always gone to the football game on Saturday afternoon.
"Every year. Wouldn't miss it. The plan for this weekend is to go to the men's football game on Friday night, the class luncheon Saturday at 12:30 and then as a class we're all going to go over and cheer for the X-Women," said McHugh. "It's a big change for the class planning behind the scenes, but in the big scheme of things that's minor compared to doing this. I'm at Western two weeks after for my 35th homecoming there - I think if Western moved the men's football game from Saturday afternoon, there'd be a riot. I'm not sure how some of the older (X alumni) from the '50s feel about this."
But McHugh, a faithful donor to X through the years, knows how his wife feels.
“Seven or eight years ago, my wife asked me how our annual donations to X were earmarked, and I told her it went to men's basketball,” he said. “That was the wrong answer. Now our money goes to men's basketball, women's basketball and women's rugby in equal portions.”
