The Carleton athletics department has announced the four alumni whose names will be the first since 2003 to be welcomed into the resurrected Ravens Hall of Fame.
The inductees include former Ravens basketball star Osvaldo Jeanty, decorated Olympic fencer Marc Lavoie, retired Canadian national water polo player Waneek Horn-Miller, and Paul Correy, rounding out the list in the builders category for his work as an alum in reviving the Ravens hockey team.
The four Ravens alumni are set to be inducted Oct. 16 into the new Ravens Athletics Hall of Fame, according to Carleton’s website.
Paul Armstrong, the senior development officer for Carleton’s athletics department, said the timing felt right to bring back the Hall of Fame.
“It was never forgotten,” he said. “There were unfortunately some other priorities and things we needed to deal with first to get our house in order, but it was always our intention to bring it back someday.”
For Jeanty, he said it is a privilege to be named to his alma mater’s Hall of Fame.
He’s the only Ravens athlete in school history to win five consecutive national championships, and is only one of four in Canadian Interuniversity Sport history to accomplish that feat.
“To be known as one of the best athletes to come out of Carleton, it’s just a big honour to be included,” he said.
Jeanty said his induction is even more special considering the 11-year hiatus.
“It’s always a good thing to be the start of something new,” he said.
While Jeanty graduated from Carleton in 2007, Lavoie arrived and dominated in his craft decades earlier.
He won a pair of provincial fencing championships during his time at Carleton from 1972 to 1976, before moving on to a fencing career with multiple Canadian national championships, as well as appearances at the Commonwealth Games, Pan American Games, and two Olympic Games.
Lavoie admitted it feels a bit strange given his long-time job as an economics professor at Carleton’s cross-town rivals from the University of Ottawa.
“I’ve been teaching [at the University of Ottawa] for 35 years and never got any prize there, so I’m happy to get something from my former school where I studied for five years,” he said.
Lavoie said he was quite surprised to receive the call regarding his selection, especially given Carleton’s reputation for largely being a basketball school that overshadowed fencing.
“Carleton has had such a successful basketball team, you would think that all of the basketball players would get this kind of honour.”
Armstrong said he is not sure how often or how many people will get a call to the Hall in the coming years, but he’s hoping it becomes a regular thing.
And when picking the historic first group of new inductees, he said Jeanty, Lavoie, Horn-Miller, and Correy are great examples of what current and future Ravens should strive for both as athletes and as people.
“It really was about incredible accomplishments that they did while they were here,” he said. “They’re true Hall of Famers.”
