For the first time since 2003, Carleton has four new faces decorating its Ravens Athletics Hall of Fame.
Former men’s basketball player and Ravens legend Osvaldo Jeanty, Olympic fencer Marc Lavoie, Olympic water polo player Waneek Horn-Miller, and men’s hockey team builder Paul Correy have joined the ranks of illustrious Ravens alumni.
In addition to the four who were honoured with plaques on Oct. 16, the 32 Hall of Fame inductees from years past were invited to sit at the 15 dining tables set up in the third floor banquet hall of Residence Commons, along with friends and family.
The inductees were toasted with champagne at the beginning of the ceremony, during which guests were served a three-course dinner.
Lavoie, Jeanty, and Correy all arrived at the ceremony from their Ottawa homes, but Horn-Miller arrived the same day on her flight from Saskatchewan.
During her speech at the gala, Horn-Miller reflected on her time at Carleton, which began when she learned to swim at the school when she was three years old.
“I’m more excited to be inducted in the Ravens Hall of Fame than I would be in the Canadian Hall of Fame,” she said.
Horn-Miller encouraged the audience to “dream as big as possible and find people to believe in those dreams.”
“At Carleton, I found those people,” she said.
Horn-Miller is the only Mohawk woman ever to have competed in the Olympic Games, which she went to in Sydney, Australia in 2000. She was also was Carleton’s female athlete of the year three times during her time in university.
Lavoie, who was introduced by fellow Carleton fencer and alumni Paul ApSimon, described his best accomplishment as being the Canadian national fencing champion seven times after his Ravens career from 1972-76.
Lavoie’s induction marks the first time a fencer will appear in the Hall of Fame.
“You don’t have to be as athletic as you have to be in football or hockey or basketball,” he said.
Ravens basketball head coach Dave Smart came on to introduce Jeanty, whom he coached from 2003-07.
“We talk about him everyday because we want everyone to be like him,” Smart said. “I’ve coached for 30 years and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as competitive as Osvaldo, and I know I haven’t seen anyone as tough.”
Jeanty, who is the only Carleton athlete to win five national championships and the fourth in Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) history, said he is honoured to join the faces on the Hall of Fame wall.
“I’ve been looking at that wall since I was a kid. Now that it’s back and being part of it, being on that wall myself, it’s just such a great honour,” he said. “Dave says I’m too young to be inducted, but I’m losing my hair, so I don’t understand why he says that.”
The only non-athlete inducted into the Hall of Fame was Paul Correy, a team builder who helped bring the Ravens men’s hockey team to competitive club status in 1991, and then back to the CIS in 2006.
Former Ravens’ hockey player Terry McCarthy introduced Correy as “the most relentless, single-minded man” he has ever met.
Correy began as a Ravens’ hockey player and coach, but McCarthy said, “he couldn’t shoot, he couldn’t pass, and he couldn’t go left.”
Correy agreed, but said his way of helping the team out was coaching, managing, and fundraising in an effort to bring the men’s hockey team back to varsity status.
McCarthy read an email from Brad Good, Ravens men’s hockey team captain from 2006-07 who wrote, “had it not been for Paul Correy . . . myself and my teammates would have missed out on some of the best years of our life.”
Correy said he was excited to see his old teammates at the ceremony, some that went back to the 1960s.
“For me, it’s like a party,” he said. “The only way I can handle it is to share it with my friends and my teammates.”
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