Alumni and current students were invited to participate in a variety of events designed to promote school spirit during Carleton University’s third annual homecoming, which ran from Sept. 16-19.
Homecoming has been at Carleton since the late 1950s. However, it disappeared along with the football program after the team was cut following the 1998 season.
In the years that followed, Carleton didn’t have any kind of homecoming.
“That was the biggest disappointing thing in my first year, that we didn’t have a football team, so homecoming wasn’t even mentioned,” said Sam Cox, a fourth-year public affairs and policy management student. “They had nothing.”
During those years, alumni were invited to participate in homecoming-type activities in May, said Mark Savenkoff, Carleton’s director of alumni and donor relations.
Flash forward to 2013, when Carleton hosted its first homecoming weekend in 15 years.
Since then, the event has continued to grow, with this year’s homecoming boasting close to 30 events spread out over four days.
Amongst a number of faculty events, the weekend also featured a golf tournament for women’s hockey alumni, as well as various dinners, networking receptions and lectures.
The highlight of the weekend was arguably the football game, which saw the Ravens pull off a close victory against the University of Toronto Varsity Blues.
“I think [homecoming is] a way to re-engage our alumni, most importantly,” said Steve Sumarah, head coach of the Ravens football team. “With a football game it always gives you an opportunity to get a lot of people together and share in old memories and all that, and that’s just good for your whole school environment.”
“I love school spirit. This is, like, what I live for,” said Cox, who is also a captain with Red Zone, a group of students who cheer for Carleton’s student athletes.
Cox added, that “it’s nice seeing all of the school community come back, seeing all the alumni come back and just good Carleton spirit.”
Mark Whitton, a Carleton graduate and former wide receiver with the football team, said being at homecoming reminded him of his first year at Carleton.
“I swear there were like three or four homecoming games and homecoming crowds that we had to face that year, so it was kind of neat to be on the other side of that and be part of such a raucous crowd,” Whitton said.
“What we like about [homecoming] is that it offers graduates a number of different opportunities to come back and to see what students are doing on campus, to reconnect with old classmates and to meet some of their old professors,” Savenkoff said.
According to Savenkoff, an expected 8,000 to 9,000 alumni returned to campus for homecoming this year.
“It’s important in that you get to celebrate your history and bring back the alumni to celebrate and be proud of their institution,” said Jennifer Brenning, Carleton’s athletic director. “Our current students can look at the alumni and see their success and what they could possibly do in their future, so it really is celebrating our history and our success and promoting our pride.”
Sumarah said there are a lot of similarities between the football program and homecoming, as both programs returned at the same time.
“I think there’s a lot of new traditions that are starting and I think that’s a good thing,” Sumarah said. “You know, every year it seems the homecoming weekend becomes bigger and bigger and I think it’s just going to continue to grow.”
According to Savenkoff, the response from the university community has been overwhelmingly positive, with attendance at homecoming events growing every year.
“I know it just ended but already we’re talking about what we can do for next year, so I think that’s a good sign,” Savenkoff said.
“This is our third year, so we’re really trying to build something and build some tradition,” Brenning said. “We’ve got off to a great start, we’ve had a number of events, we have full campus involvement, so I think this will really start to grow.”
