The rector of the Université de Montréal, Robert Lacroix, along with CEPSUM president Robert Panet-Raymond, announced today the fall 2002 launch of a new football team. The new team will be part of the university's "Carabins" Programme de sport d'excellence that will take part in the Canadian interuniversity sports league (Quebec conference). Well-known for his ability to develop player potential, Jacques Dussault will be head coach.

High-calibre coach and educator

A former university athlete himself, Jacques Dussault is taking on the Carabins with 25 years' experience as a professional, university and amateur-level coach. For the next five years, the Carabins will benefit from his versatility, his development expertise and his uncanny ability to organize a team and help it reach its objectives quickly.

"I am very pleased to join the Université de Montréal Carabins and I thank the people who are responsible for giving me the opportunity to meet this challenge," said Jacques Dussault. "The school's values correspond to my own. I will have an opportunity to help young people develop on the field and off. Our players will leave school not only with a degree, but with life experience that will serve them always."

One of the priorities of the new head coach will be to go out and attract new academic and athletic talent to the second most important university campus in Canada. "Having 42 spots available on a team is an opportunity that does not present itself often," said Dussault. "The challenge is great, but there is no doubt in my mind that everything has been put in place for us to be ready for September 2002. It will be the beginning of our journey to excellence."

The Carabins will benefit from a huge network of contacts that Jacques Dussault has developed over the years in the process of recruiting players and coaches. Dussault has in fact already announced the appointment of Maddy Lacroix as the football team's defensive coordinator, Maddy Lacroix. With ten years' experience, Lacroix has worked with the CÉGEP Beauce?Appalaches Condors since 1992 as well as having contributed to the Quebec elite 19 and under program since 1993. He has also been guest coach at the last two Montreal Allouette training camps. He is a professor of literature at the CÉGEP Beauce-Appalaches and has had an impressive career as a university player himself with the Mount Allison Mounties from (1990 to 1992) with whom he made it to the Coupe Vanier in 1991. "I am in the process of making a dream come true," he says. "I will finally have the opportunity to bring my passion for education and for football together".

The football team will play local games at the recently renovated CEPSUM outdoor stadium. Home of the Carabins, the excellence teams representing the Université de Montréal since the early 20s and command central to the Université de Montréal sports excellence program, the CEPSUM is located in the heart of the city of Montreal and is among the largest sports complexes in the Quebec. It serves not only as a university sports complex but as a community facility as well and welcomes more than one million visitors annually who take advantage of the diversified and quality programs.

The Université de Montréal is second among Canadian universities for grants and research contracts. With two affiliated schools, the École Polytechnique and the École des HEC, it offers undergraduate and graduate programs in almost all fields of study. The university welcomes nearly 50,000 students and gives out more than 2,500 masters degrees and doctorates every year.

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Renseignements
Sophie Langlois
Press Officer
Université de Montréal
Telephone: (514) 343-7704
Pager: (514) 423-0651

Benoit Mongeon
Information Officer
Carabins de l'Université de Montréal
(514) 343-6111, poste 4299
benoit.mongeon@umontreal.ca