Charlatan Live is the Charlatan's weekly audio show. [Graphic by Sara Mizannojehdehi]

Charlatan Live is the Charlatan’s weekly show about Carleton University’s latest news.

This week, host Mark Colley speaks with sports editor Jayden Dill about this year’s Panda Game – the action on the field and the drama off it.

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This episode used audio from social media videos of Panda Game partying. It also featured “Catch It” by Coma Media and “Atmospheric” by Penguin Music.

We would like to acknowledge that we are living, working and operating on the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin nation.

As settlers on this land, we are committed to prioritizing Indigenous voices and learning how we can support the ongoing movement towards decolonization and anti-racism.

Transcript

MUSIC, FADES TO CROWD NOISE, WHICH FADES

MARK COLLEY (HOST): It led to a flipped car and seven hospitalizations last year. People were charged with mischief, participating in an unlawful assembly and even rioting. The Panda Game has always been Ottawa’s biggest party. But this year, officials went to great lengths to avoid a repeat of 2021. On this week’s episode, we take a look at what went down last Saturday. The football between the uOttawa Gee-Gees and the Carleton Ravens…

UNIDENTIFIED CLIP: There’s no reset, right? We’re 3-3.

COLLEY: The party off the field.

UNIDENTIFIED CLIP: There will be zero tolerance over the weekend for any infractions.

COLLEY: And if this year is a last call for Ottawa’s biggest party. I’m Mark Colley. It’s Friday, October 7th. This is Charlatan Live.

MUSIC TRANSITION

COLLEY: We’re joined by Jayden Dill. He’s the sports editor of the Charlatan. He led the Charlatan’s coverage of the Panda Game this past Saturday and he also co-wrote an article with national editor Evert Lindquist about the partying atmosphere around Carleton. Jayden, thanks for joining us.

JAYDEN DILL: Of course. Thank you so much for having me, Mark.

COLLEY: So let’s start broad. There’s a lot that’s changed with the football team over just the last six to eight months, and going back to the start of the year when head coach Steve Sumarah was fired and they brought in a new head coach Corey Grant. Kind of walk me through what’s gone on with this team, because if you told me a year ago what the roster would look like and what the coaching staff would look like a year later at Panda Game, I wouldn’t have believed you.

DILL: Yeah, I think one thing that we have to understand is that when a head coach goes, his coaching staff tends to go with him. And that’s not so much on the departing head coach, but the incoming head coach really wants to build something for himself. And Corey Grant, coming in here, has exactly done done just that. Three coaches from last year, or just about three coaches from last year have returned, and the rest of them are pretty brand new. I’m talking about upwards of 10 new coaches and doctors coming in to help this football team. So it’s, it’s a pretty brand new coaching staff that is working with the Carleton Ravens.

COLLEY: And we’re now five games into the season, or we were five games into the season before Panda Game. What were the expectations like before the game? How had the season gone up until that point?

DILL: It’s actually a tricky question. The expectations may have not have been that high given that it’s Corey Grant’s first season as just a head coach, period. He’s never been a head coach before. He’s had coaching positions with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the McMaster Marauders, but he’s never been a head coach. This is first, you know, his first, first season as a head coach with the Ravens. So the expectations are one thing, but the hopes are another. I think after the first you know opening when the first game at TAAG Park and their first game of the season against McMaster went for his team, the hopes exceeded the expectations at this point. So I think the expectations were you know, just put in a good competitive season, really get a lot of experience to help build this to build this program into a consistent competitive program. But when you come into your your first game, and you win and you play the way their defense did, it looks very like you start to feel that you know, maybe this could be a, a playoff contending team maybe a contending team, an OUA title and maybe even go to U Sports. You never know, right? 

DILL: I think when reality hit is games against uOttawa, games against U of T games, against Queen’s where they lose but up until like know that rough Panda Game. They were pretty much, I would say maybe just above mediocre.

COLLEY: They were 3-2.

DILL: They were 3-2. When you think about right there. They’re looking for consistency, right? They’re looking to be consistent winners. But they’re just not there yet.

COLLEY: This is Carleton head coach Corey Grant.

GRANT: The record is what we are. We’re a 3-3 football team. Still learning to play, still learning with the coordinators and doing those things. Myself, as a first-year head coach and learning every game every week, something new. So right now, we’re right where we’re supposed to be, 3-3 football team trying to fight to get in the playoffs.

DILL: When you know they lose the games, they lose because of defensive mistakes and other mistakes in other areas. It’s because they’re still a new team. And I know the hopes are for them to continue winning, continue winning because they believe they can. And maybe in future years they can. But they’re not there yet. And it’s not bad. I think they’re right on level with their with their expectations.

COLLEY: And expectations. If there were many, they were certainly crushed at the Panda Game, where the final score was 37-7. Walk me through the story of that game. What happened? Had we get to the final score?

DILL: Um, I think it’s, it was probably an ended up being a below-par performance from them. That was definitely something that was below expectations. But if you look at the way they started, they actually started off very strong. The offense really had them, was really going right from the beginning, which is a little bit different from this football team. We’ve actually seen the offense struggle early on for most games, and usually the defense is what kept them in it. This game was different. The first quarter the Ravens came off, came out flying pretty strong and scored you know, the first seven points. But then the offense kind of shut down after that.

COLLEY: And that’s the only points they scored.

DILL: Exactly. I think the Gee-Gees did a very good job to get their offense going.

COLLEY: Here’s the Gee-Gees head coach Marcel Bellefeuille.

BELLEFEUILLE: The guys came back and just I think kind of settled down and calmed down. And it goes back more into the game plan and our ability to execute the game plan was different. We have this kind of little motto. We don’t react to adversity, we respond to it. And so they made a couple of plays and then our offense came back on the field, responded to it and scored. And I think that’s something that we talked about quite a bit.

DILL: I think the Ravens defense tried, they definitely made some very big, very big plays. But it just wasn’t coming from them at this point. I think that is it’s something that they’ll look back on. And they’ll reflect on and they’ll learn their lessons as they expect to for the season. But I don’t think they would have expected to lose or wanting to lose the way they did. But like you said, it’s a young team. And Corey Grant has what, been here six, seven months, maybe, right? To build a program, a successful football program takes years, right? And they’re 3-3 on the season, 3-2 before that deadly game is pretty good for a team that just brought in the new head coach. Right? That is probably where they want to be around that area.

COLLEY: And it is important context to note that uOttawa has a good team this year. They’re 5-1 after the Panda Game. And just this week, they were ranked as the sixth team in U Sports. So they’re a competitive team this year, they are looking to do big things. But obviously, there’s a lot more to the Panda Game than just the sports side of things. And I think to most Carleton students, the Panda Game is not the football itself. It is the atmosphere outside of it. It’s one of the biggest events in U Sports and one of Ottawa’s biggest parties each year, as anyone who goes to Carleton knows. The aftermath of last year’s game kind of got out of hand. Partiers flipped a car. Seven people were hospitalized, eight people were charged with everything from mischief to rioting to participating in an unlawful assembly. You covered some of the lead up to the game. How were preparations different this year than they were in previous years?

DILL: So I think this year they came in with a plan. And I think they wanted to reassure that to residents as well. There was a lot of communication coming from Carleton University, coming from the University of Ottawa, coming from Ontario Police Services, coming from even City Council.

COLLEY: Here’s Sébastian Lemay. He’s a community officer for Byward Market, Lowertown and Sandy Hill.

LEMAY: There will be zero tolerance over the weekend for any infraction, either of a provincial statute, such as the liquor license act, or the trespass to property act. And as well obviously the criminal code, if there would be any infraction committed

DILL: There were a lot of active safety measures, right? Look at the alcohol change at that alcohol policy change where I think it was only one beer that you could buy and then they were only selling beer until it reached a certain threshold. Seemed to do a pretty good job. Right. There was no streakers there. This game right, fans were respecting the game.

COLLEY: For context, there were two streakers last year. So we’re making progress.

DILL: Most of the problems that we see is the after party, right?

COLLEY: So tell me a little bit about the after party, because that’s where things got out of hand last year. And that’s where things got out of hand this year as well.

DILL: Right. So OPS I’ll, I’ll refer to them OPS and Carleton, uOttawa. And everyone involved with implementing safety measures, I’ll just refer them as Ottawa. They normally do a good job in terms of keeping things safe in the morning. And it worked. They stopped a lot of pregame parties. They stopped a lot of disturbances in the morning. It’s later on in the night, where things really started to lose control. There was some, I guess altercations or negative interactions between fans and police officers in the Sandy Hill area.

COLLEY: Reports of students throwing objects,

DILL: Right, there’s video evidence of students climbing phone poles and jumping on buses and pushing cars.

SOUND FROM PANDA GAME PARTIES

DILL: The 16 Main, it was trying to make its way through the Sandy Hill area. And it was essentially every bus after that had to be rerouted. Because of that, when you think about it was strategy. The plan worked until it didn’t. And that was later on in the evening where they had some some serious issues.

COLLEY: All told, they can probably be viewed as more of a success than last year, though. There is no car flips, no accounts of mass injury, although there were, of course, some people charged and some people arrested. What happens now? is there… You know, before the game, there was a discussion of is this the final panda game? Is a solution to Panda Game partying to cancel Panda Game entirely? Is that really in the conversation now? Or was what was done effective enough to kind of nix that at least for the time?

DILL: Well, I think it’s difficult to say right now. It’s definitely something that will have to be reviewed and be processed. But when you look at at in terms of how they were in how they enforce things, they handed out several tickets, tickets, and they arrested seven people, seven people there, no cars flipped, and the damage was very minimal. From what we can tell, compared to what has happened in the past. I don’t know why you wouldn’t consider this as a win. Yes, there were dangerous aspects. But no one was seriously hurt. And that sort of said that. I know that it’s still very, very early to tell. But that’s an a very big improvement from last year.

COLLEY: All right, just to wrap up, let’s circle back to the football for a second. What’s next for the Carleton Ravens football team, how’s the rest of their season shaping up?

DILL: So the Ravens will then take on Waterloo, October 15. The Waterloo Warriors.

COLLEY: They’ve got a bye week this week.

DILL: They have a bye week. I think it’ll be a needed bye week. It can be hard to lose such a big game, especially in the fashion that they did. And I think this they’ll take this time to regroup. And I think Waterloo is a good opponent to come up against. They’re 1-4. I think this is if you’re looking for a game to know to kind of come back against this is the game.

COLLEY: This is Carleton head coach Corey Grant.

GRANT: There’s no reset, right? We’re 3-3. We played a really good football team. This is one game in our journey. We’ll go we’ll watch the film. We’ll learn from it. And then we’re gonna keep pushing forward. There’s no resetting, there’s no, no none of that. We’re still in here. So we’re still in the fight and we played a really good team. If we want to get there and be with those really elite teams. We got to keep pushing forward

DILL: And so I think there’ll be looking to to strike back and they are 3-0 at home. They have a perfect home record. I think this is the perfect game that that they’ll be looking to bounce back with and come away with a win.

COLLEY: Jayden, thanks for joining us.

DILL: No problem. Thank you for having me, Mark.

MUSIC

COLLEY: Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Charlatan Live. This episode featured original reporting by Jayden Dill, Evert Lindquist, Adamo Marinelli, Richard Coffey, and was edited by Isabel Harder. To learn more about this story and many others, visit charlatan.ca.  We acknowledge that we are living, working and operating on the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin nation. As settlers on this land, we are committed to prioritizing Indigenous voices and learning how we can support the ongoing movement towards decolonization and anti-racism. Thanks for listening. I’m Mark Colley. We’ll talk to you next week.

Featured graphic by Sara Mizannojehdehi.

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