Things have been going very well for the McMaster women’s basketball team and they have no plans to slow down. Currently in first place in the Ontario University Athletics West with a 12-2 record, and the worst arguably behind them, another trip to the University Sports national finals looks on the horizon. But this time, senior guard Hilary Hanaka and the Marauders aim to leave with a medal.
“Once you get that taste on court playing against the best teams in Canada, it only makes you hungrier for more,” said Hanaka. “You know that you're there and you can compete, but I think just being on that playing field for the first time there was a lot of nerves going into it. I think we didn't play quite to our full potential.”
Although the Marauders faced teams like the McGill University Martlets, who they have seen before in exhibition play, the games against teams like the University of Calgary Dinos, who play a much grittier style than Hanaka and the Marauders were used to, caught them off guard. But Hanaka believes that having been there before, in addition to having such a tough OUA season this year and playing against highly skilled Ontario teams, will help the Mac women get to that top level to compete at Nationals.
“Knowing that we got there is a huge step in our team success,” Hanaka said. “Of course, our ultimate goal was getting to Nationals and getting a medal would have been a bonus, but I think for a young team with lots of changes, that was a huge stepping stone for us. So right now we are just making sure we have an opportunity to get back there to prove that we deserve to be there and that we can do better than we did last year.”
So far ensuring that OUA playoff spot has been going well for the Marauders. Even with the loss of key veterans like Lexie Spadafora, Jelena Mamic and Adrienne Peters, Mac does not appear to have missed a beat. One of the reasons is the addition of Christina Buttenham, a Hamilton native and transfer from the University of Iowa, where she played from 2014 to 2017.
“It's always tough to lose senior players. With their experience on and off the court, it’s obviously a huge loss for us,” said Hanaka. “But I think gaining players like Christina, who's been in high-level basketball for years, is something that is huge. She stepped right in and already fills a leadership role on the team.”
Not only does Buttenham have National Collegiate Athletic Association experience, but she also played for the Canadian Junior National team in 2014, and was named an Academic All-Big Ten selection as a junior and as a sophomore while at Iowa.
Buttenham has already been such a great addition for the team helping defensively, averaging 5.4 rebounds a game and having the fourth highest points per game average on the team, with 9.9. The help has been able to give Hanaka the opportunity to have big games like she did this past weekend against the University of Guelph Gryphons.
With a game-high of 28 points, shooting an astounding 62.5 per cent from the field and 72.7 per cent from the three-point line, Hanaka led the team to defeat the Gryphons 109-80 on the road.
🏀 FINAL: Hilary Hanaka drops 28 on the road, as @MacWbball blows past the Gryphons 109-80 to improve to 11-2 on the season.@mcmasteru returns home to Burridge Gym tomorrow! #GoMacGo pic.twitter.com/pEXrId3YnT
— McMaster Marauders (@McMasterSports) January 12, 2019
“Getting back into things after the holiday break is never easy, so just going back into these last two games I've been on myself to make sure I've been coming out with that fire,” said Hanaka. “Of course, once you start hitting those first couples of shots and my teammates are cheering for me on the bench and making great passes, it just makes it so much fun to play with them and to do well.”
Guelph was one of two wins this past weekend, the second came against the Wilfrid Laurier University Golden Hawks, who they defeated 59-43 to earn their sixth straight win. Having already played their most personal game this season against the reigning OUA champs the Carleton University Ravens, defeating them 64-52 in November, the worst is over and focusing on staying on top is the Marauders’ top priority.
“Just knowing that our end goal is to get that national championship helps us take every game as it comes and to not overthink them,” said Hanaka. “Another focus has been trying to remembering to take no game for granted, because there has been a lot of upsets in the OUA this year and we don't want one of those to be us.”
With the Marauders’ next two games coming against the Lakehead University Thunderwolves this weekend, they will be making sure they go into every practice seriously so that they are focused come game time, regardless of who is wearing the opposite jersey. This is the mindset the Marauders plan to have until the last buzzer goes off for the season.
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Arrival of Leonard Waverman as new dean marks the end of a tumultuous era at DeGroote School of Business
After a rocky two years, things at the DeGroote school will once again be business as usual.
This January, McMaster welcomed Leonard Waverman as Dean at the DeGroote School of Business. The appointment, which was announced last September, marks the end of a two-year period without a permanent leader at the business school.
While DeGroote’s previous dean came from a business background, Waverman’s experience is chiefly academic. Waverman, who holds a PhD in Economics from MIT, has over 40 years of university teaching and administration on his resume.
Most recently, he served as Dean of the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary.
“It’s an adjustment,” he said of the transition from Calgary. “Each university is so different.”
Before working as dean at Calgary, Waverman held positions at the University of Toronto and the prestigious London School of Business in London, England. Over the course of his career, his particular research interests have been in telecommunications and the digital economy.
When the Silhouette sat down with Waverman, he was a mere three weeks into his five-year term.
“I’d be presumptuous to talk about plans [at this point],” he said, emphasizing that establishing a direction for the school would be a community effort. “Really, a dean is just one person.”
Even so, the economics professor has a vision for where DeGroote will go from here.
“I think every business school has to search for their independent identity, their DNA,” he explained. “I think we have very good programs at DeGroote, but I don’t think we market ourselves especially well. I think we have to enhance our reputation, and we have to have revenue growth.”
He spoke of broadening the school’s reach through public talks by faculty so that people become more familiar with academia and DeGroote breaks away from being an “ivory tower.”
McMaster has some damage control to do after the controversy regarding the last dean, Paul Bates, who was reassigned out of his role in 2010.
Bates was chosen in 2004 to lead the school because of his industry experience. A 2010 report from a president’s advisory committee on DeGroote explained that “hiring a dean who was successful in the business world … and could serve as a positive external face” was a strategic choice for DeGroote, which was seen to have a low profile in the business world.
The same report called the faculty of the school “dysfunctional,” and purported that the environment included “bullying, harassment, mean-spirited sarcasm, intimidation and disrespect.” While this atmosphere was said to predate Bates, the committee that produced the report alleged that he exacerbated it, and called for the University to “redefine his role” at the school.
Bates remains a member of the faculty at DeGroote. He teaches at the Ron Joyce Centre in Burlington, a satellite campus that he helped to establish during his term, as well as serving as Strategy Advisor to the President.
The drama at DeGroote in recent years doesn’t faze its new dean, however.
“I’ve heard rumours about the previous controversy,” said Waverman. “But I’m really looking at the future of DeGroote, not into the past.”
