York alum heads for Cuba with women’s national baseball team

Only the foolhardy would dare utter that ball-yard insult, “You throw like a girl!”, to Burlington’s Kate Psota. As Psota can fire the ball at 75 miles per hour, it brings to mind the scene from the movie A League of Their Own, reported The Hamilton Spectator, July 5. Remember when the Rockford Peaches pitcher comically beans the male blowhard in the stands? Psota and fellow Burlington player and recent York graduate Samantha Magalas (BA ’05) are members of the pioneering Canadian women’s national baseball team, which heads out today for an exhibition series in Cuba. Magalas, 23, says the team likes the feeling of being pioneers in the game. “I think we’re all thinking that way. Everyone knows the work we’re putting into it now will help kids down the road. Maybe one day most Canadians will know we have a women’s national team. And one day I’d like to see us in the Olympics.” Folks in Edmonton got the message last summer when Canada won the bronze behind Japan and the US in the World Cup of Women’s Baseball. “We were getting 6,000 and 7,000 people at some games, not the 10,000 you’ll see in Japan, but really enthusiastic crowds.” National team coach André Lachance describes the two as centrepieces of the national team. “I’d have to say Samantha is the best first baseman in the world right now. She was an all-star at the position at the World Cup last year in Edmonton. She’s awesome defensively and she was on the York University men’s team last year. And she can play with (the men) without any doubt.”

The Toronto-based Marketing Hall of Legends has selected a judging panel that will draw up the short list of nominees for possible induction in 2006, reported the online daily Adnews, July 5. The organization, founded by the Toronto Chapter of the American Marketing Association and Mandrake, recognizes individuals who have made “an outstanding contribution to furthering Canadian business in the area of marketing.” The judges include Alan Middleton, marketing professor in York’s Schulich School of Business, who is an inaugural member of the hall after being inducted in 2004.

A private senator’s bill which will help lower interest rates in the payday loan industry has passed a vote in the senate, reported The Journal Pioneer (Summerside, PEI), July 5. Bill S-19, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (criminal interest rate), was introduced last fall and will now be sent to members in the House of Commons for their consideration. A 2000 study by Iain Ramsay, professor of law at York’s Osgoode Hall Law School, contains a payday loan survey prepared in the Greater Toronto Area. The study, entitled “Access to Credit in the Alternative Consumer Credit Market”, shows the cost of borrowing for seven days and for 14 days. For a seven-day loan, the cost of borrowing ranged from 670 per cent to 1,300 per cent. For a 14-day loan, the cost of borrowing ranged from 335 per cent to 650 per cent.

York alumnus Frank Ricciuti (MBA ’69) has been appointed to the board of directors of DEQ Systems Corp., the company announced in a notice published July 5 in The Globe & Mail. Ricciuti is currently Chair of a junior minerals exploration company and an adviser to a private wealth management corporation. DEQ Systems develops, builds and distributes electronic side-betting systems for the gaming industry.

With less than a month to go before the Canadian Soccer Association announces what is hopefully a final location for its 20,000-seat soccer stadium, speculation on that location has come full circle, back to a site first proposed more than two years ago, reported the Toronto Star, July 5. But the body governing soccer in Canada is keeping mum about a proposal to place the stadium – which will play host to the FIFA 2007 world youth championship – back on the grounds of Toronto’s Exhibition Place. “There’s been a considerable amount of interest in the (Exhibition Place) site…but we’ve had two false starts on this thing already, so we really don’t want to say anything now,” said Kevan Pipe, chief operating officer of the CSA, referring to the original plans to pair the stadium with a new home for the Argos, first on the Varsity site at the University of Toronto and then later on the Keele campus of York University. Both deals fell through at the last minute, the Argos signed a new deal to remain at the Rogers Centre, and the proposed stadium is now back to being a soccer-only installation.