"Gee-Gees Head Football Coach Jamie Barresi leaving uOttawa"

University of Ottawa Press Release

As of Friday, March 20, Gee-Gees Head Football Coach Jamie Barresi will be leaving the University of Ottawa. At the helm of the Gee-Gees football program since 2013, he led the team to an overall record of 36 wins and 27 losses, including two OUA semi-final playoff appearances.

"I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to all of the players that have been involved with the program for their superlative effort and dedication," offered Barresi, reflecting on this chapter of an extensive career. "I hope they will continue to challenge themselves and do the things they are most afraid of doing. They have given more to me than I can repay."

"I would also like to thank the coaches and support staff including trainers, doctors, managers, videographers, strength coaches and administration for their work as well - the same best wishes. Special thanks to Steven Drover, Danika Smith and Jennifer Elliott. As a lifetime coach, I look forward to the next coaching challenge," concluded Coach Barresi.

Barresi was appointed as the Gee-Gees head coach and program manager in January of 2013. The Hamilton, Ont. native began his coaching career with the Gee-Gees as part of the 1981-83 coaching staff, the same Gee-Gees he was a quarterback with from 1976 to 1979. He then spent twenty seasons coaching in the NCAA at such notable football programs as Penn State, including a national championship appearance in 1985, the University of Florida, and Wake Forest, and Central Florida. Upon returning to Canada, he joined the coaching staff of some of the most storied franchises in the CFL, appearing in three Grey Cups over nine years, including a win in 2006 with BC.

Over the past seven seasons, Barresi paved the way for many uOttawa student-athletes to graduate onto the professional football ranks. Just as importantly, Coach Barresi, applying the uOttawa varsity based model to his football program, implemented study halls, expanded the academic support teams and focused on fundraising for scholarships and academic support, guiding more student-athletes towards sustained academic success and opening career doors for them to lead professional lives in various fields.

"On behalf of the Gee-Gees football program and the uOttawa Varsity Athletics family, I want to thank Coach Barresi for his dedication to this team," said Sue Hylland, Director of Varsity Athletics at uOttawa. "We thank Jamie for his tireless work ethic, passion for the game and support of our student-athletes."

The search for the new Head Coach and Manager of the Gee-Gees Football Program will begin immediately as the team readies for the 2020-2021 season. The Gee-Gees first game is scheduled for Sunday, August 30th in Windsor.

Parity At Its Finest

We recently had a look a Ottawa Tech's streak of success in high school football in the late 40s and 1950. An unusual thing happened a few seasons later.

Two-game, total points playoff series were not unusual. They were the preferred method of determining supremacy in several leagues, at different levels, during the game's formative years.

In most cases, it was by choice. In Ottawa high school football in the early 50s, it was by necessity.

In 1953, St. Patrick and Fisher Park met for the city championship but that game ended up in a scoreless tie.

The second meeting actually took place the following Saturday (as opposed to Wednesday, suggested above) and the "scarlet and white" of Fisher Park took it 17-00. It was the school's first championship in only its second season playing at the senior level.

The two teams would again meet in the finals in 1954. That time, they would tie 7-7, forcing another game to be played for the second consecutive year. The return match would result in a shut out again, but with reversed roles; it was 12-00 in favour of St. Patrick.

Glebe got into the mix in 1955 but St. Patrick was in no hurry to give up its spot. This was reflected in a another scoreless tie in the final. In the return encounter, St. Patrick would defeat Glebe 11-10 in overtime to defend its crown.

So three city finals in a row had to be played a second time and the third one of them went into overtime. Crazy.

It's funny to read reports about these games today and sense the frustration around how difficult it was to name a champion. One writer at the time even suggested that this whole "sudden death" system was just not working and we'd need to go back to a scheduled two-game series.

"History of Football at Carleton"

The two images that follow form a scanned page from the Ravens football program from 2013. I believe I grabbed the program at the team's first game in 2013 since its hiatus following the 1998 season, a 47-08 loss to Waterloo.

Whither the Perley Trophy?

It is often the case that researching one subject will unexpectedly reveal some tiny detail which propels me onto my next search.

Yesterday, in the midst of writing the post about Ottawa Tech's late 40s/early 50s dominance, I came across the following portion of an article. It was written following Tech being toppled from the high school football throne by Glebe in 1951.

It was?

In a standard search for "Perley Trophy", I found an article by Martin Cleary for the Citizen from March of 2007. Someone else was searching for the trophy 13 years ago, a couple of decades after it was last handed out.

The article directed readers to a website which is no longer operational. It also included the following image.

This search also came up in an article by Rob Brodie for canoe.com in April 2007. It included something of an update on Mr. MacRea's "quest".

The search for the old trophy, which has a history that dates back to the 1930s, has been frustrating. MacRae...says he's "hit dead end after dead end," but isn't giving up yet. 

"I'm hoping," he said. "I don't know what will happen. It's a real nice trophy, almost the size of the Grey Cup, about three feet high." 

MacRae said if his quest comes up empty, "without a doubt" the current championship trophy will be rededicated to honour Graham and Wills. But he clearly hopes it doesn't come to that.

Then come November 2007, at least that much was confirmed in an uncredited story in the Citizen.

St. Mark will face Sir Wilfrid Laurier Lancers in the championship game on the Minto Sports Field at the Nepean Sportsplex. Game time is 7 p.m. It will be a battle of undefeated teams as the Lions and Lancers are 8-0 this year. 

This will be the 80th Ottawa high school senior football championship and the first one to present the inaugural Bob Wills and Ron Graham Cup to the winning team. The championship trophy has undergone a complete makeover, courtesy of an interested alumni group from the former Laurentian High School headed by Bud MacRae, who is a teacher at Bell High School. The new trophy is named after Bob Wills and Ron Graham, who coached at Laurentian for a quarter century and produced many successful teams.

So was the cup ever found? I would think that if it had been, it would have been a bigger part of the story in 2007.

I'm curious as to the Perley Trophy's story now because for as much as I've read about high school football in Ottawa, the name of the trophy didn't ring any bells.

I think that's a matter of the trophy being handed out well after the season, at least in some cases, rather than immediately after the game. This image appeared in the Citizen on December 10th, 1954, a couple of weeks after the championship was actually won.

Complicating matters, searches reveal a trophy of the same name being awarded to local baseball  and hockey teams and even women's curling champions. Also, the awarding of the trophy was not always reported in the sports section. It occasionally made its way into the local news instead. As a result, tracking it becomes quite tricky.

What we do know is that the trophy did come into play in 1931 but the first article above stating that it was intended to be used to recognize the winner of the Riders/Rangers game appears to be the accurate one. The first such game was played on November 11th, 1931.

In an article from the day before the game, Perley is referred to as a "well-known member of the Rough Riders executive". I believe he was later a Central Ward councilman.

I can not seem to locate other instances of the trophy serving to recognize a Riders/Rangers winner, but it pops up in a list of hardware handed out at an event at Ottawa Tech in 1937. Again, this is consistent with what is stated in the first article above.

After that, it is mentioned periodically, mostly in articles relating to a school event in which a number of trophies and awards are handed out. The last picture of it I've come across is from 1969...

...and the last significant mention of it, until Mr. Cleary's 2007 article, is from 1972 when St. Patrick and Fisher Park were forced to "share" the trophy as a result of their championship contest ending in a tie.

And that may be why the trophy went dormant, for lack of a better term. In 1973, for the first time, the city champion was determined by having the respective winners of the Ottawa and Carleton school boards meet. Perhaps a new playoff structure resulted in a new trophy being handed out. This 1978 celebration photo certainly seems to support the theory.

Whatever the case may be, I'm interested in its prior use as a "bragging rights" award between the Rough Riders and Rangers, similar to Pedro for the Panda Game between Ottawa U. and Carleton or the Old Boys Cup between Ashbury and Bishop's years ago. I hope to come across those results at some point.

Bud MacRae, by the way, is responsible for creating a list of high school champions dating back to 1927 that I used first for the Capital Region Football website I ran a few years ago then as the "skeleton" for the high school page on this site.

I've never met him; the list was given to me second-hand, but I've always hoped that he's seen me express my gratitude for that list. It was an invaluable starting point in tracking the history of football at that level in the region.