The raven is a bird known for its speed, strength and authoritative call. It’s a call that registers much louder than the feeble tweets of other birds. And when it comes to social media, the Ravens can tweet with the best of them.
Twitter is one of the newest trends that is sweeping the online world 140 characters at a time, and athletes are never ones to get left behind. Thousands of professional athletes tweet to their millions of followers.
This can range from promoting a new charity, or broadcasting a picture of what they had for lunch that day. As the pros get more actively involved on Twitter, so do the amateurs.
Several members of Carleton’s national championship winning men’s basketball team are tweeters. So is their head coach, Dave Smart.
The most active member of the Ravens twitter army (that we could find), however, is men’s hockey goalie Taylor Lush (@tluscious30). Most of his tweets are about life as a student, or poking fun at his own lack of playing time with the team.
“Done class for the day, I predict either gym or nap. Hint: It won’t be gym. #lazy,” reads one of his tweets.
Lush said there is no method to his madness when it comes to using Twitter.
“I don’t really follow any sort of style,” he said. “If something comes to my mind and I feel like it’s worth tweeting, then I will. It could be about sports, life, my personal opinions or just what I’m doing at that very moment.”
He said coach Marty Johnston hasn’t mentioned anything about using Twitter before, probably because nobody else on the team uses it. He does admit to tweeting from the stands during games, however. But never from his seat at the end of the bench.
Some other Ravens athletes on Twitter include men’s basketball players Willy Manigat (@YungTaylor13), Elliott Thompson (@etrain1010), Kevin Churchill (@kchurch41), Kyle Smendziuk (@ksmendzi), Gael Kanza (@YoungSJones), Greg Faulkner (@greg_faulkner) and Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) most valuable player Tyson Hinz (@TysonHinz).
The basketball players use it mostly to communicate with each other, such as Churchill asking Kanza: “Will you take break-dancing lessons with @ksmendzi this summer? He wants to know, and yes he’s serious …”
Not surprisingly, Smart seems to be the only one who does take it seriously. He tweets before every game with an insight to the other team’s strengths at what the Ravens need to do to win. As evident by the championship banner hanging in the Ravens Nest, he’s usually right.
Follow Matt Di Nicolantonio on Twitter at @di_nic