Henry Standage | March 23, 2022
After two and a half years, Western Engineering and Ivey Business School get to settle bragging rights tonight in the hockey rink.
The Ivey vs. Engineering Hockey Game is an annual event that features the best hockey players from both faculties, but was put on pause for the last two years because of the pandemic. This year, tryout numbers for both teams ranged from 50-60 students, and the top 20 students were selected after rounds of daily tryouts.
Budweiser Gardens will host the game in their 10,000 seat stadium where over 2,000 students are expected to be in attendance tonight at 8 p.m.
“People might think [such a large stadium] it’s self-indulgent for an amateur hockey game, but the distaste each program has for another is very real,” said third-year Ivey student Connor Chapman. He added that some Ivey students feel that engineering students don’t always respect their analytical thinking skills.
When asked to comment on this, Engineering player PC Ascher said that he felt as though his side is often seen as the underdog. Ascher also chalked up the rivalry to several other factors, “the two faculties are right across the street from each other, and they’re both cult-ish in their attitudes, but still big enough to have a large pool of people to pull from.”
The two faculties are known as academic rivals on campus. The engineering admission average in 2023 was 88.5% —compared to Ivey’s which was 93%—in order to gain early acceptance.
McLean’s 2022 Canadian University program rankings put Western as the 10th best engineering program in the nation, and Ivey as the country’s sixth best business program.
In the years preceding the pandemic, the engineers reigned supreme on the ice. Ivey-Engineering Ruan Badenhorst said learning this led him to switch sides and play for Ivey.
“I’ve taken a lot of heat for double-crossing, but I felt that for the good of the game and its potential to generate charity money in the future, it was best to try to establish some parity between the teams,” Badenhorst explained in an interview on Wednesday.
Game organizer Taylor Clapham said the opportunity to allow students to compete recreationally represents a healthy break from scholastic competition.
“Both these faculties are always competing intellectually, so to give them the opportunity to find another way to compete and put on a show for our student populations is a tradition we’re excited to see continue,” Clapham said.
Students interested in attending the game tonight can visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ivey-vs-engineering-hockey-game-tickets-303060962497.