By Brandi Awad
The Carleton Ravens spent their bye week preparing for what will be the biggest matchup of the 2017 season.
On Saturday, Sept. 30, the Ravens will collide with their city rivals, the Ottawa Gee-Gees, in the 49th edition of the Panda Game at TD Place Stadium.
The Ravens head into the most highly-anticipated regular season university football game in Canada with a 1-3 record, knowing that anything but a win will be a serious blow to their playoff chances.
However, a victory against nemesis uOttawa could reignite Carleton’s campaign as the Ravens look to get their season back on track.
The Panda Game has a long history, dating back to 1955. In the first-ever Panda Game played that year, the Ravens were able to come out on top with a 14-6 win over the Gee-Gees. After the game, the original Pedro the Panda was parachuted down from the roof to Carleton’s captains Graydon Harrison and Douglas Duclos, who accepted Pedro as a trophy.
The university displayed Pedro at the Carleton Commerce Dance Club, where he was stolen on Nov. 12, 1955. A group of student took Pedro and entered him in the 1955 City of Ottawa municipal elections, where he would eventually be disqualified for not paying his fees.
As the Panda tradition was born, the University of Ottawa soon became Carleton’s biggest rival. In 1956, Carleton came out on top again, taking Pedro home for the second year in a row. Rookie Cam Poulin was the star of the show, scoring both touchdowns for the Ravens in a 14-10 win. This was the last Panda win the Ravens would see for seven straight years, until they beat uOttawa in 1964.
In the meantime, another bear trophy emerged in 1958 called Carmelita that would be awarded to the winner of the other matchup between Carleton and the Gee-Gees scheduled in the regular season. Schedule changes that year had the rivals playing each other twice.
In 1960, during a Ravens’ slump against the Gee Gees, they gave away both Pedro and Carmelita. Two engineering students from Carleton weren’t too happy about it and decided to pose as reporters and steal Pedro from uOttawa. This was also the last time Carmelita was seen.
The Ravens were able to break their slump in 1962. Though they dropped the Panda Game that year and wouldn’t go on to win it for two more seasons, the Ravens were able to end the six-year winning streak against them.
Carleton was able to turn things around in 1964 with a 40-33 Panda Game win.
This Panda-turnaround was short-lived, as Carleton would go on to lose four straight Panda Games in a row.
In 1969, they were able to edge out the University of Ottawa for Pedro with a 21-20 win in front of 14,000 fans. Star running back Ross Reid was the hero of the game, scoring on a 62-yard run on a third-and-two play that led to the Ravens’ victory. Ron Wolchuk also had a big game, returning a Gee-Gees’ fumble 85 yards for a touchdown. Nearly 50 years later, this run remains the second-longest fumble return in Ravens history.
While celebrating this win, uOttawa’s head coach Bob Malloy walked into the Ravens’ locker room holding a worn out, worse-for-wear stuffed bear and issued an apology. In that moment, it had become clear that the Ravens had been duped and were handed a duplicate of Pedro.
Flash forward to 1983, one of the most exciting Panda Games ever played. The Ravens were down 28-4 by the fourth quarter, but were able to turn the game around in their favour and stun the Gee Gees 33-28.
The ‘80s proved to be a good decade for the Ravens, who won Panda Games in ‘83, ‘84, ‘85, ‘87 and ‘88.
Now, in the fifth year of their resurrected football program, the Ravens are looking to win their fourth straight Panda Game following 2014’s incredible Hail Mary at the last moment, 2015’s overtime thriller and 2016’s dominating three-peat performance in front of the largest University Sports football crowd in the last 20 years. As a must-win game for Carleton, this year’s fight for Pedro is guaranteed to be a thriller.
Carleton’s playoff hopes hang in the balance as they currently sit in seventh spot in a six-team playoff picture, trailing sixth-place Guelph by one game.
So far this season, the Ravens’ biggest problem had been consistency. Between slow starts and a varying levels of success from both the offence and defence, they’ve found themselves in some hot water.
With the playoffs just a little over a month away, Head Coach Steve Sumarah says the Ravens are going back to the basics.
“I think the biggest thing right now is that we’ve been in every game that we’ve played and right now we just need to learn to finish. We’ve been really close, we’ve been making plays, but we’re just not making enough of them,” he said.
“So, it’s right back to fundamentals and hopefully from there we can clean up some of the mistakes we’re making and start winning.”
Sumarah says he’s planning on taking it one game at a time.
“To me it’s cliché, but you have to go every play, every game – we have to take it one at a time. If we start looking ahead at the what ifs and different scenarios, then you don’t stand a chance. You just have to knock them out one by one.”
Panda Game tickets can still be purchased from the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group.
Tuesday, September 26, 2017 in Feature Stories
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