Water Polo: Fairley Repeats as OUA Coach of the Year, Colterjohn as All-Star as Marauders Finish Fourth

McMaster came up just short in an 8-6 loss to Queen’s in the OUA bronze medal game

Sunday marked a fifth recognition for both McMaster's coach Quinn Fairley and his star Colin Colterjohn, with the former repeating as OUA Coach of the Year and the latter once again cracking the OUA All-Star team at the OUA Championship.

Fairley, who was first recognized as the OUA Coach of the Year in 2001, won the award for a fifth time and second consecutive after guiding McMaster to a fourth-placed finish at the conference meet, where Mac narrowly missed bronze after an 8-6 loss to Queen's.

For his part, Colterjohn, now a graduate student in his sixth season as a Marauder, won a spot among the OUA All-Stars for the fifth time, with his only non-all-star season coming in 2017.

The two conference standouts and their McMaster team finished fourth on Sunday after busting into the OUA's final four by dramatically downing the host Western Mustangs 8-7 on the tournament's opening day Friday.

Mac overhauled a 7-6 deficit with a pair of late goals in the fourth quarter, including a penalty shot, to take out the fourth-seeded Western, with Jonathan Spence pacing the team with four goals in the win.

That result set up a clash with the three-time defending champions, the Toronto Varsity Blues, at the semifinal stage on Saturday, where the tournament's top seeds flexed their muscles. Toronto built an 8-1 lead at the half, and only extended it from there, en route to a 16-4 result.

In Sunday's bronze medal game, the Marauders fell behind 1-0 after a quarter against the Queen's Gaels, but rebounded strongly to score four times in the second and trail by just a single goal at 5-4 by the time the buzzer sounded for halftime.

Each team added a goal in the third quarter, with Colterjohn scoring his second of the game to keep Mac in touch, before Queen's found a pair of goals in the fourth to clinch bronze.

2019 OUA Water Polo Awards and All-Stars

Diego Gonzalez Delgado (Toronto) – Most Valuable Player / All-Star
Andrei Velasevic (Toronto) – Most Valuable Goalie / All-Star
David Lapin (Carleton) – All-Star
Colin Colterjohn (McMaster) – All-Star
Tony Giannatsis (Toronto) – All-Star
Alex LeBlanc (Queen's) – All-Star
Rick Vermuelen (Western) – All-Star
Quinn Fairley (McMaster) – Coach of the Year

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