Vallières career stopped

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Revue de Web

By Marc Alexander Blais, March 31, 2011

Mathieu Vallières, former star player with the Charlesbourg Alouettes from 2003 to 2008, is, or should I say was, actively pursuing his baseball career south of the border. He was playing his senior year with Neumann University as a shortstop, when suddenly everything has come to a halt.

He was told by the school that he couldn’t play or train anymore with the ball team.

Why? Mainly because he was Canadian. Let me explain.

The NCAA has very a strict set of rules to make sure the competition is fair for all clubs. These rules differ from a division to another.

In the case at hand, Valllières playing Division III where schools are not allowed to offer money in the form of athletic scholarships. They can however give out scholarship if the student maintains good grades.

And there is the Canadian Student Initiative Program. It was put in place by some universities at the beginning of the millennium to lure Canadians south of the border and by doing so, increase the international population of those universities.

In January of 2010, the NCAA Division III Committee on Infractions announced sanctions against Geneseo and Buffalo State hockey teams:

They judged that schools had used the “Canadian student initiative” as way to bolster their hockey team as the ratio of Canadian students-athletes was over exceeding the percentage of Canadian students (the percentage can’t exceed 4%).

Now it appears that the program is under examination by the committee and all universities who are “using” this program are under the microscope.

Vallières, who earned Colonial States Conference player of the week award last month, was taken off the roster as a preventive measure by the university who doesn’t want sanctions taken against its Athletic department.

Vallières is very upset by the situation, as this year is his last year of eligibility to play in the colleges. He also thinks that he doesn’t have to pay for an error the school committed. The director of the athletic department told him that he could be a student assistant coach or assistant manager. Other than that he would have to wait.

Vallières, can only hope the situation is resolved rapidly so he can resume his favorite sport.

Revue de Web publiée par Jacques Lanciault.