After defeating the York University Lions by a whopping score of 52-0 in their Friday Night Lights game on Oct. 9, the Ravens football team has punched its ticket to the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) postseason.
This is the program’s first playoff berth in 19 years, in their third season since being reinstated.
Ravens receiver Nate Behar said playing in his first university playoff game is going to be exciting.
“It’s a pretty satisfying feeling. I mean, it’s the first time doing it in our careers, so it’s a pretty good feeling for sure,” he said.
The game against York didn’t take long to get out of hand when Ravens quarterback Jesse Mills found receiver Wilson Birch for two touchdowns in the first six minutes, and the score at the end of the quarter was 23-0.
With the win, Carleton improves to 5-2, with more games than they won in their first two seasons combined.
Their final game of the regular season will be against the Guelph Gryphons, who sit tied for second in the OUA at 5-1.
“Playing them has been one of the tighter games we’ve ever actually played, even in our first year,” Behar said. “Last year was another one where we just kind of let a couple things slip, a couple plays here and there and then the game was kind of over.”
If the Ravens can beat the top ranked Gryphons they would improve to 6-2, which would tie the best record in their history set in 1986.
It would be a huge step forward for a program that hasn’t seen the playoffs often, eventually leading to its dissolution in 1999.
Carleton alumnus and former Ravens offensive lineman Abdeen Wahab, who played on the 1996 team, said he is excited to see Ravens football return to the playoffs and become competitive again.
“I played from 1992-98, and we were kind of rebuilding those first two years and in ‘96 we kind of turned the corner, but then things fell apart in ‘97-98,” he said. “It’s actually nice to see that culture of winning and good sportsmanship come back.”
The old Carleton football team struggled through the latter part of its history, finishing at the bottom of the Quebec University Football League five years in a row from 1988-92, only managing to get it back to success in 1996.
That year, the Ravens finished fourth in the league with a record of 5-3, but were defeated 28-0 in their last playoff game by none other than the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees.
After that, the team suffered two consecutive 1-7 seasons and was disbanded by the next year.
“The football program was challenged to get any traction in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, I mean the environment on campus was perhaps a little bit more political. It wasn’t a school that really got behind its sports programs,” he said.
Nineteen years later, he said he thinks interest in university sports has made a major comeback.
“I think politically the environment on campus is different now,” he said. “Back then the sports teams, specifically football, and the fact we weren’t able to put together a consistent program, made the campus lose interest in sports altogether.”
Now the Ravens football program has a chance to make an even bigger splash by pursuing the tough playoff win and beyond.
“Everyone wants a chance to be able to win their last game they play, and that’s our goal,” Behar said. “I think it’s unrealistic to not believe in your team and not believe in what you’ve been working for three or four years.”
