Everyone knows how fun it can be to support a sports team by attending a game. It’s easy to get so caught up in professional leagues such as the NBA or NFL that we forget to support our own university teams.
Luckily for us, Carleton makes it easy to be proud of supporting the Ravens, especially in basketball. The men’s team is currently number one in Canada, and the women’s team is number two in the OUA east division.
Either way, it’s important you make sure you know where you are sitting when attending a game. It may be midterm season but last Friday, the rivalry between Carleton and the University of Ottawa dragged students’ heads out of their books and into TD Place.
Not only was it my first Capital Hoops but it was also the first time the games were played at the TD Place, which became more and more packed as the night went on.
The women’s game started at 6 p.m. and had significantly less fans through the first three quarters. It only began to fill up around the start of the fourth, making the arena very lively for the start of the men’s game at 8 p.m.
Speaking of the fans, it is important to be sitting by the right ones.
The stands of the arena were relatively split 50/50 between Ravens and Gee-Gees fans, but from where I was sitting it felt like everyone but me was cheering for the Gee-Gees and shouting the infamous “F U Carleton U” chant which emerges every rivalry game.
The Gee-Gees cheerleaders, running some more friendly cheers, did a good job getting the fans riled up (not that they needed much help). But the Gee-Gees fans would cheer back and feed into the cheerleaders’ cheers.
Everyone in the section where I was sitting would join in and scream at the top of their lungs, making it impossible to hear anything from the Carleton Ravens cheer. This was to the point where it seemed like the Gee-Gees had more fans than the Ravens in the arena.
So many UOttawa fans would look at us when we started to cheer, but when the teams were neck and neck, the UOttawa fans were cheering so loud all around me that it made it feel like we were losing by a lot, even though the scores were only a few baskets apart.
There was a large group of friends from U Ottawa sitting behind me. One of them spent over half the time explaining how basketball works to their friends, who weren’t following the game due to some confusion about fouls.
They did a good job hitting their inflatable noise makers over my head, almost giving me a heart attack whenever the Gee-Gees got any baskets, blocks, or steals against the Ravens.
I gotta give it to them. They were very enthusiastic about the game the entire time but made it hard for me to feel like the Ravens had any chance of winning, when it seemed like everyone was rooting against them. At the point where Carleton had a lead later in the game, we could almost feel the glares from the U Ottawa fans all around us as we supported the Ravens.
I am the biggest basketball fan, from the Toronto Raptors to the Carleton Ravens to the Canadian Olympic team. But after Friday’s game, I will make sure I double, triple, and quadruple check where I’m sitting.
The presence of so many Gee-Gees fans screaming made it tougher to cheer for the Ravens than I ever would have imagined. But the excitement from both schools made TD Place come alive on Friday, which made it all worth it.
Photo by Tim Austen.
