“You’re on the baseball team? Concordia has a baseball team?” asked Trevor Blanchard’s hockey teammate, Sebastien Courcelles.

Over the summer, the Stingers website got a whole new look, and while Blanchard was checking out the new design, he noticed the baseball team listed. The team lost a lot of guys from last season and was looking for players, so Blanchard decided to try out for the team.

The 23-year-old hails from Sudbury, Ontario, and is in his second year at Concordia, as a leisure sciences major. After transferring credits from Laurentian University, he anticipates graduating at the end of the year. The left-winger has played hockey all his life and spends the summers playing baseball with his friends and family back home in Sudbury.

Trevor found himself in an interesting situation this season, as both the baseball and hockey teams are in their rebuilding phases. The hockey team, which lost most of its potent offense of seasons-past, is leaning on the experience of veterans like Blanchard to lead the way for a young, rookie-laden team. In the outfield, Blanchard and the other rookies are doing their best to learn as much as they can from the few remaining veterans.

“Veterans like [Chris Dyer] have been showing us a lot, giving us pointers, and trying to improve our fundamental skills. They wanted to see the team improve,” said Blanchard, who played shortstop.

Unlike his baseball teammate Andrew Nagy--who is on both the football and baseball teams--Blanchard hasn’t had too much conflict between his two sports, since baseball is over by the time the regular season starts for hockey. Up until this past weekend, Blanchard hasn’t had to miss out on much.

“[There was] conflict, obviously, since the hockey team is at a pre-season tournament in Ontario, I’ll miss a couple games, but generally we just had hockey during the week up until now, and baseball is mostly on the weekends.”

Being a rookie on a rebuilding team is a lot different from being a veteran. “Obviously, as a rookie, you’re in the majority, but the veterans that were there made us feel right at home. As a rookie, you want to help out any way you can, and a lot of us came in with varying experience. But we joined up and tried to add everything in.” Even though more experienced teams were able to capitalize on the young team’s errors, head coach Howie Schwartz always pointed out what the team was doing right. “He never came in after a game and said ‘Wow guys, that was terrible. You didn’t do anything right.’ He would discuss what went wrong and why, and we all tried to learn as much as we could.”

It took a while for everyone to “get comfortable playing at the university level. I’ve never played at a level like this, and gone up against pitchers like some of the more veteran teams we faced.”

Unfortunately, the inexperience caught up with the team and their playoff dreams were dashed, but Blanchard said: “I’ll come back to play again next season. The team will be a lot better next year after having [this] learning experience.”

After spending baseball season as a rookie, Blanchard is relishing in his role as a veteran with the hockey team. Newly-appointed as an alternate captain, he and the handful of starters left over from last season will be taking on the role of leading the team.

“We need to help the rookies feel comfortable, in university we don’t play that many games, but we skate every day, we go out together, and we get to know each other. That’s important, because the rookies can’t be scared to make mistakes. They need to just go out and give it their all, and if they do make a mistake, they will know that we are there to help and that we respect them.” Last year, the hockey team had a core of veteran players who had been together for three and four years for the most part, which caused a bit of a rift in the team, because of the cliques that had been formed. “We had a potent lineup last year with a lot of promise, but we couldn’t get it together, and the cliques did make a difference, and it wasn’t until after our trip [to Germany] that everyone really came together.”

With most of these cliques now disbanded due to players graduating, or moving on in their hockey careers, “there is only going to be one clique this year, and that’s the Concordia Stingers hockey team. Already, we’ve got rookies hanging out with vets, and it’s only a month into school. It’s a lot more of a team atmosphere this year. If you see us out, or walking around downtown or something, you’ll know that we’re hockey players, but you can’t tell who’s a vet and who’s not.”

This season’s rookies have been pegged as “hard working, and really showing a willingness to learn.” Blanchard hopes that the new players will be looking up to the veterans, who have a lot of knowledge about the game.“There’s a lot we can teach the rookies, and hopefully they will become veterans sooner, on and off the ice.”

A fellow alternate captain, Courcelles was faithful in the abilities of Blanchard to lead the team. “He is already a leader, in the room and on the ice; he steps up when he needs to, and I know he’ll do it again this season.”

Of course, memories of being a rookie aren’t so easily forgotten, as Blanchard was a rookie just last year. “Coming into last year, I knew I was going to be a rookie again, but being a rookie at 22 is a lot different than being a rookie at 16.” He explained that the veterans last season were very helpful and that he hopes to use what he learned last year “to teach the rookies, and to hopefully guide them in the right direction.”

Overall, Blanchard says he enjoys both sports, and though hockey is “my passion, I’ve been playing for 19 years now and it’s my love, baseball is a lot of fun as well, and I love it.”

He cites being competitive as the driving force behind his playing multiple sports at the university level. “I like playing at the highest level I can, and the baseball here is the highest level I’ve ever played, so to have that opportunity is fortunate, and I’m having a good time.”

Blanchard finds that due to a lack of publicity here in Quebec, “the baseball league isn’t maybe as competitive as it could be, but the league could publicize themselves more, and attract more players. I mean, we had guys coming and joining the team after 5 or 6 games, who are really good players, but they just didn’t know about the team. So, it’s important for the team to keep getting the word out.”

Head coach Howie Schwartz has been battling with that for quite some time, and it’s a step in the right direction on part of the Stingers to include the baseball team on the website. “Howie is running the team as close to a varsity team as possible, and honestly, if you didn’t know it was a club team, you could never tell. We look just like a varsity team, we have really nice uniforms and travel bags and everything.”


Stats:

Name: Trevor Blanchard
Hometown: Sudbury, ON
Program: Leisure sciences
Height: 6'3"
Weight: 210
Jersey Number: 10
Year: 2
Date of Birth: June 6, 1983