Recap The Court

Jacob Smith

In what has been a rather unspoken rivalry over the last 6 seasons, the TMU Bold and the Brock Badgers meet for the last time of the regular season on Wednesday. These two teams who have climbed to the top together and fought to get back since have been clawing and now with four games left, they meet with division stakes.

Let’s go back to 2018. The Bold coming off a quarterfinal loss to the Carleton Ravens the year before were entering the 7th year under head coach Carly Clarke with new additions Hayley Robertson and Rachel Farwell among others. They were set to host the U SPORTS Final 8 but along the way they had to go through Brock. The Badgers with their new head coach Mike Rao had brought back Melissa Tatti and Jess Morris who weren’t with the team the year before.

The Badgers and Bold weren’t in the same division in 2018, so they only met once, but that one time was in the Badgers marquee game of the season, the Paint the Meridian Red game at the Meridian Centre. TMU with the guard power of Cara Tiemens and Marin Scotten and the rebounding of Sofia Paska won the matchup 81-55 as they would go on to finish fifth at the Final 8, the Badgers finishing their first season under coach Rao with a 11-13 record and a quarterfinal exit against McMaster.

Fast forward to 2019, TMU now fully under the helm of NCAA transfer Hayley Robertson, and Brock now settled into their new system, were in the same division thanks to realignment through addition of programs. They got to see each other an additional time every year, and this year it would be three times.

See, the Badgers had gotten an addition going into 2019, and her name is Samantha Keltos, and she unlocked something for Brock that flipped the script. Samantha gave the Badgers a paint presence who they could play around and a big boost of confidence on the boards. In the biggest moments, at the end of the year when the Badgers and Bold met in the Critelli Cup final, Samantha had her biggest game scoring 42 points to secure the Badgers win at the Mattamy Athletic Centre.

The Badger struck the Bold in their home and brought home a banner, and when the OUA came back in 2021, the Bold were ready to give Brock a taste of their medicine. Meeting once again in the Critelli Cup final, this time after a shortened season which saw both Brock and TMU go undefeated in the regular season, TMU got their revenge. With the addition of Mikaela Dodig, Kaillie Hall, Tiya Misir, Eve Uwayesu among others, TMU was a different looking group than the one that took the floor in 2019, and their veteran presence shined in a spectacular fourth quarter comeback to give TMU the championship in Brock’s gym just as Brock had done the season prior.

Brock and TMU had fought through playoff losses to get to the mountaintop, and in back-to-back seasons they had each brought home a OUA championship. Brock took their 2019 championship and went on to finish with a silver at the U SPORTS Final 8 their best ever finish. TMU took their 2021 championship to another meeting with Brock in the U SPORTS semifinal where they’d come out victorious, 64-56 in overtime which propelled them to take home the national championship.

In the year following, TMU and Brock met twice to finish the regular season, TMU taking the first and Brock taking the second. The two sides repeated the result in 2023 with TMU taking a early season matchup and Brock taking the January meeting.

These two sides have gone back and forth in the same division and in separate divisions, and that brings everything to February 5th 2025 when TMU at 14-4 and Brock at 13-5 meet once again with tiebreakers on the line. TMU winning the first matchup by 14 means they can keep the head to head tiebreaker by winning or losing by less than 14 points, and Brock can take the tiebreaker by winning by 15 or more points.

Madalyn Weinert and Angeline Campbell against Kaillie Hall and Hailey Franco-DeRyck. Four who have had great seasons leading their squads backed by rosters flooded with contributions up and down the rotation. There couldn’t be more storylines for this game between two teams who have always seemed to meet in massive moments over the recent past.