The Carleton Ravens women’s water polo team finished their season this past weekend at the Ontario University Athletics Championships (OUA) in Hamilton. Heading into the competition, the Ravens were ranked fourth out of five teams.
They opened the competition on a high note, with a 6-3 win over Queen’s University, but fell to top-ranked University of Toronto (U of T) 11-4 in their next matchup.
This placed them in the bronze medal game against the University of Ottawa. The Ravens fell just short of a medal, losing 7-4.
The next day was a rematch against Queen’s in the fourth place game. The Ravens bounced back from the disappointment of the previous loss and cruised to a 10-2 victory.
“It was a challenging weekend. We are in the second year of a rebuild so we have a lot of newer girls, but we also have some really great veterans leading the way,” said Ravens head coach Victoria Peters.
“Our first three games were tough ones and we fought our hardest to change the scoreboard in our favour in the second and third games,” said Ravens fourth-year player Caitlin Dean. “The final game, the real Ravens spirit showed and we came out with a well-deserved win over Queen’s.”
However, instead of leaving the pool and looking forward to next season, the Ravens are left to wonder whether there will be a next season.
“OUA sports need to have a minimum of six teams to have a sport in the OUA and currently there [are] five OUA teams [in women’s water polo],” said Samantha Magalas, a programming co-ordinator with the OUA. “This issue has been looked at by our OUA sport committee and our directors, but no decision has been made for next year . . . Typically anything like this would go to our sport committee meetings and there is one happening very shortly this month.”
“I don’t know if a decision would come out of that or not but it would definitely be addressed and from there, if there was further action that needed to be taken, it would be addressed at that meeting and then would go forward to a board,” she said.
Women’s water polo was one of two sports, along with women’s squash, to have fewer than six teams in the league in the 2014-15 season.
The OUA is also the only university sports conference within the Canadian Interuniversity Sport to offer water polo as a sport.
“The coaches and the team have been aware that the women’s water polo program were on a probationary period with the situation that we had to try to get a sixth team entered,” Peters said. “We’ve been trying to rally other universities to get teams organized for women,” she said, while adding two universities have enough players to potentially form a team.
Although there are other opportunities to play water polo in Ottawa, Dean said it’s difficult on a student budget and, “it’s no where near the same in terms of quality.”
Dean added she would not want to play for anyone else after playing for Peters and assistant coach David McClintock.
Despite the uncertainty of future seasons, the Ravens said they are remaining positive.
“I’m still treating it like we have a season next year and still trying to keep rebuilding the Ravens women’s water polo team back to what it was,” Peters said.
