CHEERS: To Kiera Rigby of the UPEI Lady Panthers basketball team who has been on a recent scoring explosion. She was named both UPEI and AUS female athlete of the week ending Jan. 21 after leading her team to a pair of key victories last weekend. At Dal last Friday, the 5th year forward from Charlottetown posted a game-high 30 points in the 84-69 win, shot an amazing 72 per cent from the floor including 75 per cent from the three-point line and 78 per cent from the free-throw line. The Panthers went on to down the top nationally ranked Axewomen 88-68 Saturday in Wolfville where Rigby posted a game-high 25 points. “Kiera’s performance on the weekend was the best individual performance by a player in my tenure at UPEI,” said coach Greg Gould. Going into weekend home action against Cape Breton, she was leading the Atlantic conference in scoring, averaging 18.4 points per game. In Saturday’s series opener, she poured in a game-high 31 points in UPEI’s 76-65 win over the Capers. Rigby, an honours science student, added 18 more points in an 88-78 loss to the Capers Sunday.
JEERS: To The P.E.I. Liquor Control Commission, which was forced to shut down all PEILCC stores much of Saturday afternoon due to a computer issue. Stores closed around noon and didn’t re-open until after 6 p.m., sending Islanders scrambling to independent agency stores around the province which were unaffected by the technical glitch. Mel’s in East Royalty had a traffic jam most of the afternoon as thirsty Islanders poured into the store once the three commission outlets in the city shut down. A PEILCC spokesman said the shutdown was an automatic response by the commission's security software in response to a possible attack. Is there nothing that Russian hackers won’t leave alone?
JEERS: To CTV for skipping over Belle River artist Dylan Menzie on Wednesday night’s episode of “The Launch.’’ Despite heavily promoting the episode in the days prior to the program, which showed that Menzie would be part of the show, when viewers tuned in there was only a brief mention of him but the program didn’t show his audition for the judges. A lot of Islanders tuned in to see the 23-year-old singer-songwriter show off his chops and piano skills only to be disappointed. Menzie didn’t make the cut but that’s not the point. Menzie’s audition should have been shown. All is not lost, however. Menzie’s performance is available on CTV’s website at www.ctv.ca/TheLaunch.
CHEERS: To P.E.I. skip Lauren Lenentine who will attend the World Junior Curling Championships in Scotland as an alternate for Team Canada. Nova Scotia’s Kaitlyn Jones won the women’s gold medal at the Canadian Juniors as her Halifax team defeated Quebec 5-3. The Jones team asked Lenentine to be its alternate for the Worlds, March 3-11 in Aberdeen. P.E.I. started the Canadian tourney at 5-0 but missed a playoff berth.
JEERS: To the federal Liberals and Canada Post for their failure to restore home mail delivery – breaking an election promise made in 2015. In a compromise decision last week, the government finally reversed a Conservative plan to convert home mail to community boxes. But all routes converted prior to a freeze put in place after the last election will remain in lace. It puts the Liberals in an awkward situation, especially MPs who campaigned loudly on the need to reverse those conversions. And it disappoints many Islanders, especially seniors and those with disabilities who can’t access those community boxes.
