Varsity Blues staff and coaches have been busy this summer recruiting new players and hiring new coaches to strengthen teams. Here’s a rundown of the Blues’ recruits thus far.

Football
Gurjant Singh is a defensive end from Mississauga and will be competing on the football team this fall. Singh plans to study criminology to become a police officer upon graduation. He previously played for the St. Joseph’s Jaguars and the Mississauga Warriors, and was a member of Team Ontario. Singh has also been on the Canadian Football Chat’s top 100 players of 2014.

Stone Sousa, a receiver and returner from Brampton, will join Singh on the football field. Formerly, he was an all-star in the Ontario Varsity Football League (OVFL) junior program in both 2011 and 2012. Additionally, in 2012, Sousa was named the OVFL Adams provincial conference junior MVP while playing for the Brampton Bulldogs.

Acting as the football team’s offensive coordinator will be Luigi Costanzo, who brings a wealth of experience to the position. For four years, he was a coach at the University of Ottawa. During that time in 2013, the U of O Gee-Gee’s had the CIS’s (Canadian Intercollegiate Sport) best 7.5 yards rushing per rush. In 2013, they had the second best record for total yards gained in the country.

Some of the specific positions Costanzo filled were the offensive line coach, the running back coach, recruiting coach, and alumni outreach coordinator.

Basketball
Abena Addo is a women’s basketball player from Brampton. She completed her undergraduate degree in environmental health science at McGill University, and is now studying for her master’s in engineering at U of T. In the 2012 and 2013 seasons, McGill won the RSEQ championship with her competing on the team, and finishing in fifth place twice in the CIS national championship.

Maddy Baker will also be joining the women’s basketball team this coming season. Baker is originally from Vancouver, and she will be studying in the Faculty of Arts & Science this fall. In high school, she was the captain of her team for three years, and in her final year she took her team to the B.C. championships, finishing in fifth. She also was a provincial all-star and a competitor in the BC summer games.

The Varsity Blues women’s basketball team hired Ian Morse as a full-time assistant coach. He has previously served as the assistant coach of the Waterloo Warriors men’s basketball team. Besides his time with the team, Morse ran the on-court portion of the Waterloo Warriors High Performance Academy, for children ages 8-17 last year. He co-coached the under-16 Kitchener-Waterloo Lightning last year as well.

Hockey
The men’s hockey team welcomes the new full-time assistant coach Dan Price behind their bench. In 2001, he graduated from the University of Saskatchewan School of Law. From 1995 through 1998, Price was a goaltender at the University of Regina. His coaching experience includes acting as the assistant coach of the Tri-City Americans of the Western Hockey League. They went to the post season twice, thanks to the guidance of Price.