Concordia United

Concordia Unifies Clubs in CCSU Charity Soccer Tournament

photo dylan maloney
photo dylan maloney
photo dylan maloney
photo dylan maloney

The first, hopefully annual, Concordia Caribbean Student’s Union Charity Soccer Tournament took place March 26, and let me tell you: I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many balls flying around in one place. Well, aside from the last McGill party I went to.

Sixteen teams in total were present for the qualifying rounds, which ran for a solid five hours. They were largely made up of experienced players, with a respectable amount of participants, who were less familiar with the sport, mixed in.

This dynamic made for a competitive yet enjoyable atmosphere at the event, which was held inside the Stinger Dome. Two fields were booked for the tournament in order to maintain an efficient rate-of-play, with matches running simultaneously to save time.

Each team represented a different student association, such as the squad from the Arts and Science Federation of Associations and UNICEF Concordia. The purpose of this inter-association tournament was to unify the various cultures and clubs at Concordia using the world’s most pervasive sport.

I had a very informative chat with Marvin Coleby, president of the Concordia Caribbean Students’ Union, who told me that they’d actually expected some teams not to show up.

“Usually with this kind of thing you’ll get three or four teams who get automatically disqualified for not even showing up for qualifiers,” says Coleby. “Then the people in charge have to rush to reassign match-ups between teams, but luckily we’ve got a full house this time.”

In fact, most teams had organized themselves quite well—so well that no “drop-in” players needed to enter, as there were already full rosters across the board. This probably has to do with the fact that the CCSU had quite a bit of promotional power behind them, from ads on CUTV to support from the Dean of Students’ Office, who contacted the heads of each student association to invite them to enter the tournament.

The CCSU also managed to get sponsorship from the likes of the Concordia Bookstore and Public Mobile. Contributions such as these made it possible for 100 per cent of the proceeds to go directly to the Montreal Children’s Hospital.

Once the teams played through the qualifying rounds, at around 9 p.m., the playoffs began. Each and every squad made a valiant effort to claim first place, but when the dust settled it was the team representing the Concordia University Tamil Mantram that was left standing.

CUTAM was awarded $100 to be added to their budget, while each player received a fifty-dollar gift certificate from Public Mobile, an event t-shirt with the CUTAM logo on the back, and their name inscribed on the championship trophy.

All in all, the CCSU certainly succeeded in their goal of rallying Concordia’s various organizations (culture-based or otherwise) together for a day of fun and football.

For more information on the Concordia Caribbean Students’ Union, visit ccsu.concordia.ca.

This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 28, published March 29, 2011.