At the top of the seventh inning, Carleton Ravens first baseman Owen Constantineau stepped up to the plate with the championship on the line.
The Carleton Ravens baseball team was tied 3-3 with the Guelph Gryphons and had already collected two outs in the last inning of the 2024 Canadian National University Baseball Championship final.
The Ravens had centre-fielder Andrew Sahadeo in scoring position on second base, but if Constantineau struck out, the Gryphons would only need one run in the bottom of the inning to secure the championship.
“I don’t usually hear much when I’m at the plate, I’m in my zone,” Constantineau said. “And once I get in that zone, it’s pretty tough to get me out of it.”
Constantineau, the eventual tournament MVP, fired a line drive into left field, sending Sahadeo in for a run to give the Ravens the lead when it mattered most.
“I haven’t seen a baseball player in a weekend that locked in,” Ravens head coach Daylon Courchene said of Constantineau.
With momentum in their favour, the Ravens never looked back. They scored four runs in the final frame to earn a 7-4 victory and the national championship.
The national championship in Kitchener and Guelph, Ont., brought together some of the top baseball programs in the country.
Following years of contention and a dominant 2024 season with a 22-8 record, the Ravens were finally national champions. All the while, they competed as the only non-varsity team in the tournament.
“We are a club team oftentimes competing against fully-funded varsity programs,” Ravens baseball general manager George Rigakos said.
Playing without the financial support that varsity status provides, players pay lofty team fees and miss out on luxuries like team trainers. Although this did not deter them, the Ravens were under pressure from the start of the tournament as they lost to their eventual championship opponents, the Gryphons, in their first game of the tournament.
“We knew Guelph was going to be probably the best team in the tournament other than us, so losing to them 2-1 wasn’t like a backbreaker,” Rigakos said. “We just knew that we had to win our next two games.”
The Ravens dismantled Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières by a 7-3 score on Oct. 18.
In a tight matchup that same day against the University of New Brunswick Reds, the Ravens desperately needed a win to move on to the semifinals.
With a one-run lead and two outs in the fifth inning against UNB, the Ravens called on reliever Jackson Hurst to shut the door. He recorded four strikeouts in two-and-a-third innings to punch Carleton’s ticket to the semifinal.
Pitching was consistently a huge factor in the Ravens’ success throughout the tournament. Their pitchers were awarded player of the game honours in three games where they faced elimination.
Ravens starter Jack Novak continued the team’s pitching dominance in the semifinal and tossed a complete game against the Acadia Axemen on Oct. 19.
Perhaps the gutsiest performance of the tournament came from starting pitcher Nathan Van Putten, who turned in a quality start in the final against Guelph.
Van Putten went head-to-head with Gryphons pitcher Ryan Cooper for six innings, each allowing only three runs. With the game tied, each team brought in closers to shut the opposing lineups down. The Gryphons’ closer forced two Ravens outs in the seventh, pushing the Ravens to the brink.
That was, until Constantineau took the plate.
“As soon as I got on deck, I was just waiting to get up there,” Constantineau said.
“I knew something big was about to happen.”
Featured photo by Ravens Baseball via Dan Inglis Photography
