On Nov. 18 to 21, Carleton University will host the U Sports men’s soccer national championships. Eight of the best teams in Canada—including the Carleton Ravens—will compete for gold. The Ravens have hosted men’s soccer nationals on three previous occasions: 1984, 2002 and 2008. This is the story of those years.
Forty-two years and counting
As Christopher Johnson walked the well-trodden path from Ravens Perch, then named Raven Field, to the Charlatan office on the fifth floor of the University Centre, the first sentence of his game story swirled in his head.
“Forty-two years and counting… Carleton has still never won a national championship in sports,” read the Nov. 15, 1984 edition of the Charlatan, with Johnson’s story sitting across from an ad for a red Chevrolet Chevette. “But on a cold and rainy Saturday afternoon in Ottawa, our soccer team came as close as we might ever get.”
On Nov. 10, 1984, the Carleton Ravens lost 2-1 on a penalty shoot-out to the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds. Carleton’s soccer program was in its infancy, having been granted varsity status only two seasons prior in 1982.
Prince’s Purple Rain was on the airwaves. Tetris had just been released.
Carleton came within inches of its first national championship in any varsity sport, allowing a UBC goal 15 minutes in but scoring on Mike Lanos’ bending free kick five minutes later. The score stayed 1-1 through overtime before penalty kicks crushed the Ravens’ underdog season.
“I was broken,” said Lanos, who is now semi-retired and teaches part-time. “You never let it go … Not that it would have changed the trajectory of my life or anything, but, god, I wanted that banner up there for the boys, for Bill Thompson, our coach, who was phenomenal, for this school.”
Lanos, who founded the men’s soccer alumni association and was inducted into the Ravens Hall of Fame in 2016, remembers it all—including his shot on the south net with three minutes left that was just within the reach of UBC’s all-Canadian goalkeeper Brian Kennedy.
“He literally reached and stopped it with his fingertips on the line, two inches away from a national championship,” Lanos said. “Not that I haven’t let that go or anything.”
On the other side of the field was Mark Stokes, Carleton’s goalkeeper. Stokes was vocal on the field but a quiet leader in the locker room.
While the Thunderbirds outshot the Ravens 19-8, Stokes largely held UBC at bay until penalty kicks.
“I remember lying there after the last shot, knowing that that was it,” said Stokes, who now works for the federal government. “[I was] obviously disappointed but probably [feeling] just a sort of sense of calm.”
The Ravens were underdogs in that game, up against a technical UBC squad. The Thunderbirds had multiple players who played for the Canadian national team and, as a more established soccer program, had more gravitas in recruiting players.
Carleton, on the other hand, was almost exclusively composed of players from the Ottawa area.
“These guys were overachievers and they worked so hard and had such great spirit,” said Johnson, who now works as the editor of Globalite Magazine. “Just to get to the finals and just to get to the penalty kicks—that felt like a great achievement.”
But losing that game was crushing.
“I think collectively, we probably always will look back wistfully and say ‘What if?’” Stokes said. “Not so much that it would’ve been Carleton’s first title, but it would’ve been our title.”
Still, there was hope for athletics at Carleton. Outside of football, sports had long been an after-thought for the university, but the success of men’s soccer in 1984 was a breakthrough for Carleton athletics.
“I like to think that year and that journey somehow helped the school move forward,” Lanos said.
Sixty years and counting
Michael Hoefler ate pancakes for breakfast on Nov. 10, 2002, and took the 4 bus to campus. He got off at Bank Street and Holmwood Avenue near Lansdowne, even though the 4 route went directly to Carleton.
“That morning I wanted to go for a little walk and really clear my mind,” Hoefler said.
It had snowed the previous days and was just above freezing, but Hoefler decided with teammate Declan Bonnar to forgo a turtleneck and instead wear nothing but shorts and a jersey for the national gold medal game.
“When we went into overtime, I was like, ‘Oh my word, I’m going to have to take a penalty shot and I can’t even feel my arms or my legs anymore,’” Hoefler said.
He would never get the chance. Instead, Brock University Badger rookie Andrew Norton scored a golden goal in overtime to win 1-0. For Carleton, it meant yet another year without a national championship in any varsity sport.
The Ravens were favourites entering the game, ranked as the number one team in the country two weeks earlier. Brock was ranked sixth and Carleton had beat the Badgers twice during the regular season. It seemed like it was finally Carleton’s moment to shine.
“I remember distinctly thinking, at the end of this, I’m going to have a gold medal around my neck,” said Hoefler, who is now co-president of the alumni association and president of the organizing committee for the 2021 nationals.
The Ravens had their opportunities. In the first 10 minutes, Hoefler curled a shot from the right-hand side of the 18-yard box, hitting the underside of the crossbar. Carleton midfielder Gord Macdonald ran in on an empty net with a perfect shot.
“He just sends it into orbit,” Hoefler said. “We used to say in the old days, like a satellite—he just hit it over the net. We just had so many chances. Chance after chance.”
At the time, Carleton still wasn’t considered a sports school. The football program had just been disbanded in 1998 and the school had no varsity men’s hockey team—or even an arena on campus.
“This was before [basketball head coach] Dave Smart reeled off 10 basketball championships,” said Bill Cooney, sports editor for the Charlatan in 2002-03. “If you wanted to play sports, Carleton really wasn’t the place to go back then.”
And yet, there was the men’s soccer team, favourites to win the school’s first national championship, on home turf no less.
“It was a big deal at the time,” said Cooney, who is now a producer at CBC Sports. “Carleton’s first title was there for the taking and they just couldn’t quite get it done.”
The championship game was Hoefler’s last as a varsity athlete and his memories of the loss, in front of family and friends, are still vivid.
“This was one of the greatest disappointments in my life,” Hoefler said, adding that he hasn’t watched the tape of the game, even 19 years later. “It hurts.”
Hoefler remembers returning to the locker room after the game and seeing buckets of champagne the school had prepared for the championship celebration.
“[I] thought, ‘Oh man, we really, really muffed this one up,’” Hoefler said.
They drank the champagne anyway.
Seventy-nine years and counting
The Carleton Ravens men’s basketball team, under the leadership of Smart—now Carleton’s director of basketball operations—won the university’s first national championship in March 2003. They’ve now won 15 of the last 18 national championships.
In 2003, Carleton had the nickname of “Last Chance U.” After winning it all, the chants changed to “We’re number one.”
“That was the first time I’ve ever honestly even seen sports pride [at Carleton],” Cooney said, recalling a rally the men’s basketball team held at Oliver’s, the student pub located in the University Centre, now named Ollie’s.
Carleton hosted men’s soccer nationals again in 2008 but lost 4-1 in the quarterfinals to the Laval University Rouge et Or. They ended in fifth place.
To this day, Carleton has yet to win a national championship in men’s soccer. The Ravens took home bronze at 2018 nationals, their only medal since winning silver in 2002, and finished fourth in the nation in 2019.
“I would like that jinx to be broken,” Stokes said. “I would love to see a team succeed where we didn’t.”
When Lanos watched the Ravens practice on Nov. 10, he stood on the field for one of the first times since his playing days. The field is Edel Grass Diamond Blade turf now, not the same natural grass Lanos played on in 1984. But the south net, the one he nearly scored a championship-winning goal on 37 years ago, is in the same spot.
“These guys, I’m watching them, like they don’t realize—and you don’t realize till you look back, until you’re in that position—this is a special time,” Lanos said. “I hope that a lot of them give back and cherish their time with the guys, with the brotherhood, the same that we did. It’s pushing 40 years and some of these guys are still my best friends.”
Featured graphic by Sara Mizannojehdehi.
