Gryphons Beaulieu, Mustangs Sproviero earn OUA Athlete of the Week honours
Burlington, Ont. – Aurore Beaulieu and Franco Sproviero have been named Ontario University Athletics (OUA) Athletes of the Week for the period ending January 5, 2020.
Female Athlete of the Week – Aurore Beaulieu, Guelph Gryphons, Hockey
The second half of the season couldn’t have gotten off to a better start for Aurore Beaulieu and the Guelph Gryphons, as the reigning champions took down another of the nation’s top teams in their first game of 2020.
Beaulieu was brilliant between the pipes for the Gryphons in their lone game of the weekend, limiting the Blues at every turn thanks to what may have been her best game in a Guelph uniform. Toronto was applying pressure early in this McCaw Cup rematch, getting 15 shots on net in the opening frame, but Beaulieu turned them each away to help Guelph secure the 1-0 lead after the first period. Another 11 saves the rest of the way kept the Varsity Blues off the scoreboard from start to finish and powered the Gryphons to the critical victory as the push for the postseason heats up.
It was the third shutout of the season for Beaulieu, as the fourth-year goaltender is putting together a solid season in her first as the team’s primary starter. The goose egg brings her 2019-20 mark to 4-5 with a 2.42 goals-against average.
Male Athlete of the Week – Franco Sproviero, Western Mustangs, Hockey
If the Western Mustangs men’s hockey team had a new year’s resolution to ramp up the offence, then no player took it to heart more than Franco Sproviero, who was an instrumental piece of the team’s offensive onslaught to open 2020.
In Western’s first matchup of the new year, the team outscored Waterloo in a high-scoring affair, putting home six goals in the win. Providing the Mustangs with their second tally of the game to close out the first period was Sproviero, whose first goal of 2020 gave his side the one-goal edge at the time. Early in the second period, the talented centre would set up Western’s fourth goal of the game, ultimately finishing with a pair of points in the team’s 6-4 win.
Despite putting a plethora of pucks in the net on Friday, the team, and Sproviero specifically, outdid themselves on Saturday. Western bulged the twine nine times in a 9-4 win over York, with a trio of those tallies coming off the stick of the Sarnia, Ont. native. Once again, he scored the team’s second tally late in the first, this time on the powerplay, before doubling down late in the second with the eventual game winner. The rookie would finish off his night with a third period marker that put the game out of reach and secured Western’s second straight win to open the calendar year.
The five-point weekend helped to catapult the first-year forward into eighth spot in league scoring with 25 points (10 G, 15 A) on the season.
