Nov 11th, 2005: Merivale 22, Colonel By 02

The high school page was originally built to include only the senior level. Generally speaking, the site tracks football from ages 17 onwards so junior high school football doesn't get much attention.

For a few years in the mid-2000s, the senior level operated in two tiers. I believe the major difference was that tier one could compete provincially, and tier two did not. Tier one, then, was perceived as being the superior of the two and got all the attention here.

Whether that perception is accurate or not, tier two was still senior football and now that the high school page is filling up quite nicely, it's time to start adding the second tier, starting with Merivale's championship in 2005. Standings and playoff results leading up to that game have been added, as well as a brief summary of St. Peter's semifinal win in Tier 1.

I'm not sure exactly why the article goes off a cliff like that at the end but that's not my doing. 

Aug. 17th, 2004: "Cruisin' For a Bruisin'"

Linebacker Kyries Hebert officially announced his retirement today, and did so as a Montreal Alouette, but he has the distinction of having played with two of Ottawa's franchises, something very few people can claim.

The article below is from his first year in the CFL. It took little time for him to make an impression. 

His playing career would conclude in 2018 with the REDBLACKS, a season in which he would contribute 47 tackles, two sacks and a forced fumble.  

2002, June 12th, Ottawa Citizen: "Renegades Set To Go Downtown" -

Obviously inspired by Eddie Brown being named the head coach of the Orleans Raftsmen Midget team earlier this week, I dug up the article below. It's from shortly after Brown joined the Ottawa Renegades training camp for that team's first season and provides a rundown of his colourful career.

He contributed 25 receptions for the Renegades in 2002 for 316 yards and a score before being released in early September. 

Sept. 7th, 2008: "Sacobie Racks Up Record in Rout"

2008 Gee-Gees results are being added and since a significant record was set in the second game of the season, I wanted to dedicate a post specific to it. 

Nov 18th, 2000: uOttawa 20, McMaster 15 (Churchill Bowl)

Playoff game summaries for the 2000 National Champion Gee-Gees have been added to their page but because this Churchill Bowl summary was awkwardly displayed, I'm putting it into a post to link to from that page. 

Sept 29th, 2001: Sooners 16, Jr. Riders 15 (OT)

By broadening my search, I've now managed to track down all the Jr. Riders results from 1997 to 2001 inclusively. The Gazette newspaper from Montreal was very helpful in nailing down the few missing scores that had eluded me until last night.

There were a few game summaries added as well, though many are just a single paragraph rundown of the players who scored. Some weren't even that detailed, they were essentially a confirmation of the score, the team's place in the standings, and their next opponent. I didn't bother copying those.

There is a discrepancy that I can't seem to figure out though; The official standings I've seen for that season display the Riders at 6-1-1 but...I can't find a tie among their results. The closest is the game below which even mentions that the Riders were 4-2 as a result of that overtime loss against the Sooners. 

My guess is that this game was misidentified as a tie by someone.

The Sooners would win another one-point game against the Jr. Riders in the Manson Cup, after which the Jr. Riders moved to the Ontario Football Conference on the Canadian Junior League. More on that later but for now, their first era is about as fully recorded here as it's going to be. 

As for the Sooners, I'd started to wonder about the state of their big comeback because they'd been so quiet since the announcement but they returned to social media this past week, including a new Instagram account.

I find the hashtags used encouraging here. They appear to be aiming to restore teams at the varsity level (OSFL, Ontario Summer Football League) and senior/semi-pro (NFC, Northern Football Conference) as well as their standard junior club. I thought they might focus on the junior club initially then expand from there but that doesn't seem to be the case. It looks like steam ahead. Great news unless I'm making too much of a couple of hashtags.  

June 24th, 2004: Toronto Argonauts 10 @ Ottawa Renegades 20

In making small updates to various pages, I happened to notice that while I have several Renegades recaps posted, they are all from 2002 and 2003 so I thought I would throw one down from the highly-disappointing 2004 season.

Ottawa hosted the Grey Cup game that year. Some members of the Renegades ownership group decided this was a good opportunity to cash in to offset some earlier losses. The team went cheap as a result and so a 3-0 start to the regular season crumbled into a 5-13 record and the team on the outside looking in come playoff time.  This is the second of those initial three victories. 

Sept 2nd, 2002: uOttawa 43 @ Toronto 00

Results of the 2002 university of Ottawa Gee-Gees season have been added to that team's page, including a couple of game recaps that were "crop, copy and paste" friendly from the Ottawa Citizen.

I want to emphasize the first game of that season because it was Denis Piché's head coaching debut. Piché would lead the team to a 44-20 regular season record and make them perennial playoff participants so that game seemed noteworthy.

Happy 20th Birthday to the Ottawa Renegades

I guess.

I ran into this completely by chance. I was actually looking to confirm uOttawa scores from the 2001 season. An article about the Gee-Gees' home game  against Laurier on October 13th made reference to Renegades co-owner Brad Watters being invited for a ceremonial kickoff. Clearly the franchise had only recently been awarded then, so I went back a few days and easily located the article from October 11th about the team's birth the previous day.

There was much more material but much of it was spent recapping the Rough Riders' history and reliving the team's painful final season in 1996. The former is mostly broad strokes and includes nothing that has not been covered here already and the latter is best moved on from so I have no particular interest in copying any of it. It does, however, speak to the level of interest at the time that the announcement ate up the first three pages of the sports section.

Sept 14th, 2002: Ottawa Renegades 26 @ Calgary Stampeders 12

Hey, have you heard? The consensus worst-team-in-the-league went to Edmonton and ran out with a win, much like Elks head coach Jaime Elizondo ran out on his former team in 2019.

The key play in Ottawa's victory was, of course, a 102-yard interception return for a touchdown by defensive back Abdul Kanneh. Following the play, one of the announcers (probably Glen Suitor, I can't recall for sure) made reference to a 109-yard interception return by Gerald Vaughn during his time with the Ottawa Renegades.

Sounds like a good reason to dig up that game summary. 

The photo above was taken by Colleen Kidd for the Calgary Herald. 

Just Added: The 2005 Athletes In Action Senior Bowl

Finding results and summaries of past AIA Bowl games has been challenging. Some years you might stumble into an article about preparations for the game but not its actual outcome. One year in particular, the Citizen had a picture from the game but didn't provide a score in the caption or a connecting story.

The proverbial torch was being passed from one organizer to another in 2005 and as a result, the contest generated a little more local media attention that year. All that is explained by Mr. Martin Cleary below.

2005: St. Peter Becomes The First NCSSAA Team To Win A National Capital Bowl

Following the post from Thursday, July 15th, about St. Mark's National Capital Bowl victory, I needed to refresh my memory about the history of this series of Bowl games.

It didn't take very long. The previous year, Martin Cleary provided all the details while covering St. Peter's success in that game for the Ottawa Citizen, including past participants. That was very handy. 

Photo by Ian Macalpine for the Kingston Whig-Standard

2006: St. Mark Lions Win the National Capital Bowl

The High School page above tends to focus on local results but the article and accompanying image copied here gave me the idea to include recent National Capital Bowl results as well. Results from the EOSSAA games from the 40s are noted, why wouldn't these be?

I'll do that as I happen across them but in the meantime, enjoy reading about an ending that had to be simultaneously mystifying and stress-inducing for Lions coach Paul Brown. 😬

June 20th, 2003: Ottawa Renegades 27 @ Hamilton Tiger-Cats 17

There aren't many details to offer in regards to why this particular game summary is being posted today. Simply, I took a moment to add a few scores to the Renegades page from that season and decided to shine a spotlight on this season-opening contest. Any victory over Hamilton is a pleasure worth reliving anyway. 

I am reminded now that Hamilton went 1-17 that season and even that one victory very nearly eluded them.

The third-place-in-the-East Renegades still failed to make the playoffs because the fourth-place Western team (the BC Lions) crossed over and took their spot on the basis of having a better record. If not for that rule, Ottawa would have travelled to Toronto to play the 9-9 Argos, a team they were 2-1 against that year. Makes one wonder...

2009: Sooners Return To, And Win, The OFC

"Hey, did you miss us?"

I had been working on locating some past results for the Ottawa Sooners. I added a few more from the 2004 and 2005 Quebec Junior Football League seasons, the point I'd reached in chronological order, but got bored with that and jumped ahead a bit.

In 2009, the Sooners returned to the Ontario Football Conference and once again gained the opportunity to play for a national championship, something the QJFL did not offer. They won the Conference's championship in their first year back but unfortunately bowed out to Edmonton in national play.

The game summary below is from the OFC championship game. The Sooners page now also includes the summary for the team's first game back in the OFC, a 41-14 beating of the Hamilton Hurricanes, and the OFC semi-final defeat of the London Beefeaters.