After months of speculation, the Carleton Ravens women’s rugby team has officially been granted varsity status for the upcoming 2012-13 season.
The announcement pushes the total number of varsity teams at Carleton to 10, with football set to bring that number to 11 the following year.
Jennifer Brenning, Carleton’s director of recreation and athletics, credited the influence of the incoming football team as a catalyst for this promotion.
“We are very excited to be offering another women’s varsity sport at Carleton,” she said in a press release. “This would not have been possible without the return of football and the strong partnership between the athletics department and the Old Crows.”
For Kaitlin Walker, a member of the rugby team, the 2012 season can’t start soon enough.
“I’m really excited,” she said. “We worked really hard this year and we’ve trained basically as a varsity team. It’s nice to know that the hard work of previous players has finally paid off.”
Walker said the team’s current training regimen will be a “great help” for the squad, as they are hoping to make the jump to varsity as seamless as possible.
“I think we’ll be able to make the transition much quicker because of that,” Walker said. “It’ll definitely make it easier to compete right away.”
The team has been playing as one of the many competitive clubs at Carleton in recent years, meaning they’ve received limited funding from the school for travel costs and other expenses.
As a varsity team, they will now be taken care of in that regard. But the announcement also brings an added responsibility. Carleton’s athletic department has a well-documented history of bringing down the axe on varsity teams who don’t perform on the field. The most recent example is the women’s field hockey team, which was cut from the program in April 2011.
But Walker said the team has all the necessary pieces to be successful right from the opening scrum.
“I think we’re going to give teams a run for their money,” she said. “This year we’ve really improved as a team and come a long way. With the great coaching staff we have, I think we definitely have the potential to do very well.”
For the past two seasons, Denis Blondin has led that coaching staff. He said the promotion will be a major boost in the annual recruitment process.
“The advantage of a new varsity program is that student athletes who might not otherwise be considering Carleton University will begin to consider our program very seriously. A varsity program gives players the opportunity to compete at the highest level and in turn will attract high level athletes looking to push their limits,” Blondin said in an email.
The majority of the teams at Carleton compete in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) East division. But the women’s rugby team will be following in the footsteps of the Ravens women’s hockey program, which competes in the Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec (RSEQ) league.
As such, Carleton will be joining a league that boasts three of the nation’s top 10 teams, according to the latest Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) rankings. Those three teams are the undefeated Rouge et Or from Laval University, last season’s national finalists, the Concordia Stingers, and the McGill Martlets.
“From what I’ve heard, Concordia and McGill will probably be our toughest competition next year,” Walker said.
Playing in the Quebec-based league will also see the Ravens come up against the University of Ottawa, as well as Bishop’s and Sherbrooke University, respectively.
“We will have to overcome our inexperience in the league and our limited experience together as a team, but given how quickly the players have bought into the program and how focused they've been on following the process these last few years I have no doubt that we'll get the results we want and that we'll peak at the right time,” Blondin said.
