If varsity football returns to Carleton in 2012, the number 37 still won’t return to action. The only retired football number belongs to Tom Timlin, a member of the Ravens’ Hall of Fame class of 1997, who is part of the group trying to bring football back on the field at Carleton.
“It was a great experience for me, and those experiences could be shared with other students,” Timlin said about bringing back the team.
Timlin’s experience as a defensive back and linebacker with the team lasted five seasons, from 1981 through 1985, he said.
“The program gave me a lot of things that I could take with me in the future. Life lessons that I learned during my time at Carleton, I’ve used and still used in my work and in my family life,” Timlin said.
During that time, Timlin won a number of awards, including the Canadian Interuniversity Athletics Union’s President’s Trophy for the top defensive player in Canada in 1983.
He also holds the Carleton record for the highest number of interceptions in a career with 14. The laundry list of his awards are listed on his Hall of Fame profile.
“I’m pretty proud of being part of a team that won a conference championship in ’85,” he said, adding his favourite personal achievements were switching positions from linebacker to defensive back and having his number retired.
Timlin said he joined the football team’s coaching staff upon graduating from the biology program and stayed there through the early 1990s.
“I think I had a lot to give to the players, understanding the game from actually playing two different positions,” Timlin explained. “Having had some kind of impact on those kids was a great high for me.”
In the years since he left Carleton, he worked in telecommunications, got married and had two daughters, Timlin said.
Timlin’s latest challenge off the field is raising enough money in alumni donations to field a team in 2012, which will rely entirely on donations, he said.
“We have to make some significant progress in the next month or so to really make that happen,” Timlin said. “Our funding efforts aren’t going well. The commitment we made to the university was aggressive. We’re not there yet, and we just need to put that over the top.”
Still, it is time to bring back the team and its traditions, such as the annual Panda Game against the University of Ottawa, he said.
Re-introducing a team at Carleton would be great not only for university-level athletes, but for the larger football community in Ottawa, Timlin added.
“I know from working in the community, in football, there’s a need and there’s a great talent pool here of great football players. For the local talent, there’s Ottawa U, and nothing else,” said Timlin, who added he now coaches youth and high school football.
“I have people ask me whenever I coach when Carleton is coming back, so people want to stay in the Ottawa area and would rather go to Carleton then go elsewhere,” he added.
Timlin said his role is organizational, involving planning how the football program will run at Carleton.
His goals, he said, are to have a quality program that gives players the best academic and athletic experiences possible while creating a football culture in which the whole campus can support and participate. Eventually, he and the other alumni involved in the team want to build a stadium on campus.
For now, the group organizing the comeback is most interested in the quality of the team and the experiences it could offer players, Timlin said. The alumni want to support the team financially, but hope to add experience and “man-power” to the athletic department.
“We’re looking at creating a team we can all be proud of,” he said.