Lions continue to announce recruits for 2017 season

York University Lions teams continue to announce recruits for the 2017 season.

Field hockey
York University Lions field hockey head coach Zeeshan Minhas announced the first group of recruits who will join the program for the 2017 season.

Among the first six are four players from B.C. including Haley Bannister, Amira Brar, Laura Touhey and Natalie Winter, as well as Ontario natives Maddie Mitchell and Frankie St. Louis.

Bannister, Brar and Touhey, all from Coquitlam, B.C., are already very familiar with each other after years of playing high school and provincial team field hockey together in their hometown. This past year Bannister and Brar were the co-captains at Gleneagle Secondary School, where they were also teammates with Touhey. Throughout their careers they led the team to consecutive first-place district titles, Fraser Valley championship gold and silver medals and top-eight finishes at the BC High School AAA senior girls’ championships.

Winter, also from Coquitlam, B.C., comes to York with former teammates as she joined the other three with the Polar Bears. She attended Dr. Charles Best Secondary School, where she was the captain of the field hockey team in her senior year. Her talents have taken her around the world representing various field hockey teams and she has also spent three seasons on Team BC.

Mitchell comes to York from Kitchener, Ont., where she spent four seasons on the team at Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute and was the captain this past year. She helped the squad reach the regional final three times and was named a Central Western Ontario Secondary Schools Association (CWOSSA) all-star in 2016. She won a U16 national bronze medal in 2015 as captain of Team Ontario and served the same role for the U18 squad in 2016. She also attended Field Hockey Canada’s talent identification camps in 2015 and 2016.

St. Louis is a local product from Toronto, where she attended Riverdale Collegiate Institute. In 2015 she won a gold medal with Team Ontario at the provincial championships and in 2016 she was a member of the Canadian national indoor junior team. She also spent 2.5 months with The Reds in Perth, Australia, on their U18 and women’s 2s teams.

Football
York University Lions head football coach Warren Craney continues to add to his impressive 2017 recruiting class with the signings of defensive lineman James Kypreos and receiver Luther Hakunavanhu.

Kypreos and Hakunavanhu solidify a strong recruiting class that includes several talented players on both sides of the ball. York’s full 2017 recruiting class will be announced in the coming weeks.

Kypreos, a local product from Richmond Hill, Ont., joins a defensive line that is brimming with young talent, including two members of the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) all-rookie team from last season in Rossini Sandjong-Djabome and Skye King. A 6-foot-4, 250-pound defensive end, Kypreos comes to York from Villanova College, where he starred for the Knights.

Hakunavanhu, from Edmonton, is the latest recruit to head east and he joins a long list of talented players from Alberta who have selected York to continue their football careers and go to school. The 6-foot-4, 195-pound receiver played high school football at McNally and has spent the last two seasons playing with the Edmonton Wildcats in the Canadian Junior Football League (CFJL).

Women’s basketball
York University Lions women’s basketball head coach Erin McAleenan has added four recruits to the class of 2017 with the signing of Cyanna King, Megan Stewart, Lauren Golding and Madison Bardoel.

King is a 6-foot forward from Pickering, Ont., who played at St. Mary Catholic Secondary School in her hometown and helped the Crusaders win the junior girls’ LOSSA championship in 2014. She has also played club basketball in the Ontario Basketball Association (OBA) and the Junior Elite League (JUEL). She won the OBA U19 Division I title in 2014 and is now playing for the Advantage Titans in JUEL, averaging 11 points, 14 rebounds and 1.7 blocks per game this season.

Stewart comes to York from Saint John, N.B., where she starred on one of the top high school teams in the province and has been a New Brunswick provincial team player for four years. She was a starter all of last summer at the U17 nationals and had a big game against the eventual national champions from Ontario, finishing with 15 points.

Golding is a six-foot guard/forward from Windsor, Ont., who comes to York with an impressive basketball resume. She spent the last two seasons playing high school basketball at École Secondaire Catholique E.J. Lajeunesse, where she helped the team win the OFSAA silver medal in her grade 12 year and finish in fourth place this past season. She was also named a first-team WECSSAA senior girls’ all-star.

Bardoel is a 5-foot-7 guard from Tecumseh, Ont., who played her high school basketball at St. Anne, where she won a pair of Windsor and Essex County Secondary Schools Athletic Association (WECSSAA) ‘AAA’ championships in 2014 and 2016. She was also a league all-star this past season and her team’s MVP last year, and an Ontario Basketball league all-star in 2016 with her club team.

For more updates on York Lions news, visit www.yorkulions.ca.