By Earl Zukerman
Six incoming freshmen to McGill have been pegged to share $30,000 and are among the 35 recipients of recruitment bursaries totalling $165,000, announced last week by the Quebec Foundation for Athletic Excellence. The amount includes five awards of $3,000 apiece, distributed to Canadians from outside Quebec who have chosen to pursue their educational and athletic careers in a Quebec university.
Heading the group of McGillians is football player Frédéric Paquette-Perrault from Collège de Vieux-Montreal and Redmen soccer recruit El Mehdi Ibn Brahim of Collège d’Ahuntsic, each of whom will receive a lofty $8,000 bursary. Both plan on studying in the Desautels faculty of management.
Volleyball player Claire Vercheval, the daughter of former Montreal Alouettes lineman Pierre Vercheval, will receive a $4,000 bursary to study physical education at McGill after graduating from Collège Édouard-Montpetit.
Rounding out the McGill group are women’s hockey players Jade Downey-Landry ($4,000, Arts) out of Dawson College and Lauren Bowman ($3,000, Engineering) from The Edge School in Calgary, in addition to football player Jean-Philippe Hudon ($3,000, Kinesiology) from Collège Notre-Dame-de-Foy.
Laval leads all RSEQ schools with a dozen recruitment bursaries, followed by Montréal (7), McGill (6), Concordia (5), Bishop’s (2), UQAM (2) and Sherbrooke (1).
“In the last few years, RSEQ teams in all sports have represented Quebec tremendously well at the national level, bringing home many CIS (national) championships,” said Patricia Demers, associate executive director of the FAEQ. “The student-athletes who have been recipients of recruitment bursaries in the past played significant roles in helping secure these championships, and most as soon as they arrived on the university scene. We’re so proud to watch them compete and grow on the field, in addition to developing into models in the classroom and in their community.”