Par Richard Boutin
Le Journal de Montréal
À 24 heures de la pause de recrutement de la période des Fêtes, les Redbirds de McGill ont tiré un véritable coup de canon en mettant la main sur l'un des joueurs les plus courtisés de la cuvée 2025.
Joueur par excellence du circuit collégial Division 1 en 2023 avec des gains records de 1171 verges, le receveur Nathan Carignan, courtisé par toutes les équipes du RSEQ, poursuivra sa carrière avec les Redbirds tout comme son coéquipier avec les Géants de Saint-Jean-sur-le-Richelieu Charles-Olivier Cyr, qui évolue comme ailier rapproché du haut de ses 6 pi 6 po et 245 livres. Les deux ont remporté la médaille d'or avec le Canada l'été dernier au championnat mondial U-20 disputé à Edmonton.
L'histoire complète
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University football: historic recruitment for McGill
By Richard Boutin
Le Journal de Montreal
Dec. 20, 2024
With 24 hours to go before the holiday recruiting break, the McGill Redbirds have pulled off a real coup by acquiring one of the most sought-after players of the 2025 crop.
Receiver Nathan Carignan, the Division 1 CEGEP circuit's player of the year in 2023, with a league record 1,171 receiving yards, courted by every team in the RSEQ, will continue his career with the Redbirds. So will Charles-Olivier Cyr, his teammate with the Saint-Jean-sur-le-Richelieu Géants, who plays as a tight end at 6-foot-6 and 245 pounds. Both won gold with Team Canada last summer at the U-20 World Championship in Edmonton.
"Since I started out in the university system, I've never seen a team able to recruit a dozen players that were also courted by the Rouge et Or and the Carabins," said Redbirds head coach Alex Surprenant. "Good players attract good players. That's the recipe for success in Laval and Montreal. Nathan and Charles-Olivier are very good players, but they're not the only very good ones who have signed with us."
Bothered by two injuries this season, including a fractured fibula, Carignan missed three games and the play-offs, but started running again a few weeks ago.
"Snowball effect"
In his first season at the helm of the Redbirds, Surprenant wanted to replenish the coffers, but he never thought he would succeed in recruiting like this. Carignan and Cyr are the 39th and 40th recruits to opt for the tenants of Percival Molson Stadium.
"I'm a down-to-earth guy and even my most optimistic scenario didn't come close to what we've achieved so far. This exceeds my expectations. It's the effect of good news over the last eight or nine months that has created a momentum that has turned into a snowball effect."
Surprenant identifies three reasons for the football program's renaissance. "There was the hiring of the new coaching staff last February, the interesting season we had and the involvement of the alumni," he explained. "With a more interesting football program and an incredible university academically, we now have a different 'one-two punch' to what you find elsewhere in the RSEQ."
Lack of depth addressed
While he agrees that 40 recruits is a very high number, Surprenant says he had no choice but to go for numbers. "It's an abnormal and exceptional number that we won't see every year.
"With a line-up of between 80 and 85 players in 2024, I wonder if we weren't the smallest team in the country. We made up for our lack of depth much more quickly than I thought. Because recruitment was so thin last year, we needed a two-in-one crop."
With all these young wolves, can the Redbirds aspire to rival the might of Laval and Montreal in the short term?
"We want to be in a position to compete as quickly as possible, but it's always hard to predict," summed up Surprenant, a former Concordia Stingers offensive coordinator. "We've speeded up the rebuilding process, but we're a long, long way from making predictions. First and foremost, we need to create cohesion in the group between the veterans and the rookies."
If he has overtaken Vincent Forbes-Mombleau (1,093 yards) and Kevin Mital (1,058) in the CEGEP record books, can Carignan be compared with these two receivers?
"All three have had an exceptional and equally great impact in the CEGEP ranks," said Surprenant, "And we'll see what happens next. Nathan is a different receiver from Kevin."
