Landry & Gerych receive national honors

OTTAWA (CIS) – Rugby player Ghislaine Landry and cross country runner David Gerych, both of St. Francis Xavier University, are the Canadian University Sport Mitsubishi female and male athletes of the week for the period ending Oct. 12, 2008.

Landry, a third-year human kinetics student from Toronto, set a number of individual records and helped the 10-time AUS champion X-Women establish a few marks of their own in a 60-0 road win over Saint Mary’s. The reigning CIS player of the year set AUS single-game records with seven tries and 35 points in the victory to finish the six-game regular schedule with 22 tries, also a new conference standard. StFX finished the campaign with a perfect 6-0 record outscoring their opponents 416-0 and becoming the second team to keep their opponents scoreless for an entire season since women’s rugby became a CIS sport in 1998, after McGill in that inaugural 1998 season.

Laval cross country runner Catherine Cormier, Guelph rugby player Brittany Benn and Manitoba hockey player Addie Miles were also nominated for the women’s award.

Gerych, a fourth-year exchange student from Louny, Czech Republic, travelled to Quebec City with the X-Men on Thanksgiving weekend and won the individual title at the Laval Invitational, completing the 8-kilometer race in 24:43.79. The reigning AUS individual champion beat out, among other competitors, defending CIS champion Alex Genest of Sherbrooke.

Genest and Saskatchewan hockey player Steven DaSilva were the other male nominees.

Female nominees:
AUS: Ghislaine Landry, rugby, StFX (recipient)
QSSF: Catherine Cormier, cross country, Laval
OUA: Brittany Benn, rugby, Guelph
Canada West: Addie Miles, hockey, Manitoba

Male nominees:
AUS: David Gerych, cross country, StFX (recipient)
QSSF: Alex Genest, cross country, Sherbrooke
OUA: No nominee
Canada West: Steven DaSilva, hockey, Saskatchewan

About Canadian Interuniversity Sport
Canadian Interuniversity Sport is the national governing body of university sport in Canada. Fifty-two universities, 10,000 student-athletes and 550 coaches vie for 21 national championships in 12 different sports. The CIS also provides high performance international opportunities for Canadian student-athletes at Winter and Summer Universiades, and 32 World University Championships. For further information, visit www.universitysport.ca.

For more information contact:
Michel Bélanger       
Communications Manager
Canadian Interuniversity Sport
Ph: (613) 562-5670 ext. 25
Cell: (613) 447-6334
Fax: (613) 562-5669
belanger@universitysport.ca
www.universitysport.ca