Jadelina Tep-Chhun
Clocking in her second silver medal, second athlete of the week award, and first OUA gold medal in just her first two months of university is Jadelina Tep-Chhun, UW’s star women’s golfer.
Over the Oct. 19 weekend, the women’s golf team won gold at the OUA invitational championship, their first in fourteen years, behind Tep-Chhun’s stunning 76 and 77 score performances, for a total of 153 at the end of the tournament.
In golf, where the lowest scores win, UW won with a final score of 463 and silver place went to Toronto’s Varsity Blues, who recorded a score of 468. Winning by such a thin margin, it’s safe to say Tep-Chhun’s performance was a huge part of what put UW over the edge.
She started playing golf at age seven, being guided by her father and her brother, Satshia Tep-Chhun, who also golfs for the Warriors on the men’s team. The St. Thomas native has always had a knack for putting.
“I’d go to the range with my dad, and around nine I started playing provincial competitive events” she recalls. “[When I was a kid] it was always me and my brother going to the range to practice – people would call us the Tep-Chhun siblings.”
When women’s golf coach Carla Munch heard about her while the rookie was still in high school, she knew she couldn’t let such talent go to a different school. Tep-Chhun didn’t want to pass up the chance to play for such a successful team either.
“In grade 11, [Munch] reached out to me and in grade 12 she asked me my plans for postsecondary. I was thinking about going to school in the states, but I looked at the opportunities like co-ops and the scholarship I was offered and [I decided to go to UW],” she says.
Golf might be in her blood, but dedication to her craft is why she can put a gold medal on her resume. During the off-season, she spends two hours a day training her swing mechanics, then does putting drills for another hour and a half.
Leading up to the tournament, she tried to keep her head cool. After training at home during reading week, she admits to feeling nervous when it was time for action. But the team had her back and she rewarded them for their support.
“I [had been pulling my shot to the left during practice] and was scared I’d do it again. But our assistant coach Jen and [my teammate] Abby Barker came up to me and told me ‘you got this’.”
She looks up to professional golfer and Olympic champion Lydia Coe, citing her as having a “smooth style” that she tries to emulate. Being a key part of ending a fourteen-year championship drought in her rookie season, Tep-Chhun might be competing against Coe before she knows it.
Their season now over, the women’s golf team will pick up their clubs again in June, where they’ll be putting their skills to the test in a national tournament.
“Her winning [so many awards] is pretty incredible. She’s having a heck of a first year,” Munch said.
Sam Schafer
In another rain-soaked matchup, the Warriors put their faith in goalkeeper Sam Schafer, who had seven saves in the OUA men’s soccer quarter-finals against the Brock Badgers in a 3-0 shutout. The Kitchener native doesn’t let it feed his ego, however; instead, he says he “[hopes] the team’s success can continue. The goalkeeper awards are kind of like a team award in [his] eyes.”
Soccer’s been a part of his life since he opened his eyes. A devout Arsenal fan, as a kid, he would save shots from his older brother in their backyard, “and then from there, it just became something that [he loved] doing.”
He came to UW when he got in contact with men’s soccer head coach Jon Morgan. Schafer played in Cambridge, where Morgan coached. The connection was natural.
“Once I told [Morgan] I got accepted into UW for engineering, he said he’d [give him a spot on the soccer team],” he recalls. “I have a good relationship with all the coaches.”
UW is clearly the school for him. He’s adapted to the student-athlete life well; currently on co-op, he works 9-5 before attending evening practices.
There, he trains with “[the] four goalkeepers on the team, so [James Ramsay], [Lorin-Alexander Lopez], [Christian Davakos], we all kind of help push each other.”
Their hard work is paying off. Schafer ranked fifth in the league for saves, with thirty-nine, and seventh in save percentage, stopping seventy-two percent of shots taken against him.
In the game on Saturday, Oct. 18, he kept calm while UW dismantled the Badgers.
“During the game, I’m just trying to stay switched on and everything, as the whole team starts to play well, confidence grows, and we’re feeling good,” he says. His most important save came in the second half, when a kick from the Badgers put the ball dangerously close to the Warriors’ net.
“A ball went through near the goal, and my centerback [Daniel Shoosan] made an incredible run to get back that [threw off the Badgers]. From there, I had a one-on-one with the guy and I [saved it by kicking it out].”
More than a gym rat, he also regularly “dissects [film] and sees what other goalkeepers could do better, what I could do better,” in his free time, but he also goes over it with the team.
He says what sets UW apart from other teams is “our [on-field] IQ. I think there’s a lot of guys on the team that genuinely love the game, and I think that’s definitely given us success, just [making the right plays].”
With the interview ahead of the semi-final matchup with Toronto’s Varsity Blues, he said, “[the team] definitely knows it’s going to be our best challenge yet. We haven’t been in the semi-finals, even playoffs, in a few years now, and I think we’re all just buzzing to play the game.”
The Warriors fell 0-2 to the Varsity Blues in Toronto on Saturday, Oct. 25.
