With the new year came a fresh opportunity for the Marauders to showcase their curling prowess on home ice
To start the new year, the Marauders curling team hosted the first curling invitational of the year. The McMaster Invitational took place during the first weekend of January, bringing together fierce competition from multiple universities across Ontario.
The invitational competition served as an exciting opportunity for both the men’s and women’s curling teams to sharpen their skills and build momentum ahead of the Ontario University Athletics championships this year. “We had a great weekend going 4-1 with some pretty controlled wins.” said Ben Winchester, one of the co-presidents of McMaster’s curling team.
We had a great weekend going 4-1 with some pretty controlled wins.
Ben Winchester, Co-President
McMaster Curling Team
Over the two-day period for which the invitational took place, the men’s team faced the University of Toronto, Trent University and York University once each and Brock University twice. They ended the invitational with an admirable four wins and one loss, finishing third after a 5-1 win against Brock in the playoffs. The women’s team performed just as well, ending the invitational with four wins and one loss.
The team worked on many aspects of their game prior to the invitational on the weekend. Namely their pregame practices.
“Pregame practices are a major component of curling tournaments. They typically are not included in invitationals, however they were in the one over the weekend [McMaster Invitational]. They determine who has the last shot in the first dent which is a huge advantage. Also at the end of practice each team also throws a draw and the draw score is used for tie breaking purposes.” said Winchester.
Their pregame practices turned out to be effective as the Marauders ended up having hammer in three of their matches.
Looking forward, Winchester expressed that the men’s team is hoping to work on being a more offense-oriented team. This shift aims to capitalize on scoring opportunities and to put more pressure on their opponents.
“We’re a more conservative and defensive team. We don’t typically have a lot of rocks in play which results in our wins being narrow for the most part. We’ve recently focused on upping our offense to score some big ends and we saw some glimpses of that in the invitational. Hopefully this is something that we can keep building on.” said Winchester.
As one of the more tenured members on the team in his fourth year, Winchester naturally has taken up more of a leadership role.
“It’s a little bit of pressure, but I love it. The most important thing is probably holding each other accountable on the ice.” said Winchester.
Last year, the Marauders didn’t have the best performance at the OUA's, having placed 12th.
“We weren’t expecting to do that well last year, however the 12th place finish was still a disappointment,” said Winchester.
Although the curling team has stayed the exact same, the men’s have been performing a lot better than they were during this time last year. This year they have a win percentage of 66.7 per cent compared to last year's of 23.3 per cent. “We’re playing a lot better this year and that's probably down to this group having more time to mesh together and understand each other,” said Winchester
We’re playing a lot better this year, and that's probably down to this group having more time to mesh together and understand each other.
Ben Winchester, Co-President
McMaster Curling Team
Winchester is eyeing playoff success with the men’s team during his last year of his undergraduate career. However the Marauders will face a tough game against Laurier, who have won the OUA championship seven times in the last decade. “I’d really like to make the playoffs. And once you’re in, it's kind of just taking it game by game from there.” said Winchester.
After a successful invitational at home, the Marauders men's and women's curling teams will take on the Brock Invitational on Jan. 18 and 19 ahead of this year's OUA championships on the weekend of Feb 6, 2025.
By: Drew Simpson
Without any lights on in L. R. Wilson’s Black Box theatre, it can be a dark void and clean slate waiting to be molded. Three school chairs sat staggered, two up front and one centered and backwards. On the attached desk were three dark-red bricks formed into a cross.
The chairs sat in front of three projector screens, one facing forward and the other two diagonally placed to enclose the space. A quote by John A. Macdonald calling for industrial boarding schools sat on the main screen. Projected images of the Mohawk Institute Indian Residential School portrayed different rooms onto the screens.
The Mush Hole performance is a reckoning to express the depths of tormented realities faced within the Mohawk Institute without traumatizing members of the audience with lived experience. The project aims to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Call to Action.
Of the five characters, each represents a survivor’s story. They each have names, or as the Mohawk Institute identified children with, a number. Number 48 and 29 were Ernest and Mabel who met at the residential school and became father and mother respectively to number 34 and 17, Walter and Grace. The fifth character is number 11, the girl without a name or family, as she was a runaway from the Institute.
After some brief introductions by the director of Indigenous studies at McMaster and by Santee Smith, the artist producer of the Mush Hole Project, the lights that allowed the audience to find their seats dimmed into the darkness. And we, the audience, became part of the void as we watched their stories.
The show started with choking. Everyone was constantly choking because they were constantly silenced by the Institution. Another constant was starvation, as one scene clearly projected the mush they ate. At first it resembled oatmeal, but that breakfast dish does not call for maggots. The maggot-infested mush was all the children ate in the Institution, inspiring the name given to the institution by survivors as well as the title of the performance.
While the characters were often all within the same room together, they moved in lonesome. Often the characters mimicked trying to hug each other but never being able to actually touch the other person as if a force field blocked them.
There was an incessant longing to comfort one another which sadly was retaliated with violence. This violence was conveyed upon themselves in the form of slapping their own hands away, scrubbing at themselves or even upon each other as the children fought.
Smith explained that in such a prison-like atmosphere, survival and self-preservation become priorities over human connection. Agonizingly, all I could do was sit and watch siblings Water and Grace constantly reject each other’s tried comfort or condolences. Even when Walter needed it the most trapped inside a boiler room.
The introduction to Walter’s solo was a visual backdrop and sounds of steam and other sounds to set the tone of the boiler room. As every character had a solo in a specific room, this solo was gutting. He danced as if trying to escape and to stop whoever was stripping him. The solo was suggestive, but it was the fear, guilt and trauma in his eyes and his hands as they reached out during his dance that communicated he was being abused.
Every person suffered in the Institute. The girl labelled number 11, was lucky enough to run away, but it was suggested she did not fully escape. At the end of her solo, the screen showed her laid in the snow, her hair covering her face.
In another scene Mabel and Ernest sat at their kitchen table, playing popular 1950s music as Ernest drank and Mabel carefully pushed the chairs under the table, tapping at imaginary heads and smiling. Sometimes she motioned to spoon-feed the imaginaries in their seats. Ernest pulled and shoved the chairs away, urging Mabel to drink.
In the inescapable prison, Grace used her taught Christianity to cope. In one scene she loudly sang a gospel as number 11 and Walter rumbled and choked in their seats.
The show communicated multi-faceted torment, discussed the ideas of identity, self-hatred, inter-generational trauma, abuse and overall the effect of such a prison-like system that was the Mush Hole. Above all, it was conjoined stories of resilience for surviving every room and every lock and key.
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