Oct 5th, 2013: Return of the Panda

Oct 1st, 2022: "Gendron stars as Gee-Gees roll to Panda Game victory over Ravens"

Finding coverage of regular season university football can be tricky at the best of times. That doesn't normally apply to the well-hyped Panda Game, but unfortunately the coverage of post-game behaviour by students ended up dominating my search results.

The article below is originally from the Ottawa Sun but found through MSN dot com. It was written by Ken Warren and the full version can be read through this link.

In the entire 2021 season, Nicholas Gendron registered a grand total of 173 receiving yards for the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees.

Fast forward to Saturday’s Panda Game, when the Gatineau native had the game of his life in front of the packed, spirited house of 23,078 students at TD Place, where the Gee-Gees ran all over the Carleton Ravens in what ended up as a 37-7 victory.

Photography by Emir Atli 

...

Gendron finished the afternoon with eight catches for 211 yards, the fourth best receiving day in Gee-Gees history.

Thousands of students were lined up, still on their way into the stadium, when Gendron slipped behind the Ravens defence and hauled in an 81-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Ben Maracle late in the first quarter.

The spectacular play erased an early 7-0 deficit, turning any and all momentum in the Gee-Gees’ favour.

“You know, when the ball is in the air, it’s kind of silent,” Gendron said. “But, when the ball is in your hands and the crowd erupts, it’s just so special. And being in the end zone and seeing my teammates being so happy, it was a great moment. The offensive line did such a great job on that play and the whole game protecting for Ben.”

Photography by Guillaume Sénéchal 

...

A support player a year ago — he caught one pass for 10 yards in the 2021 Panda Game — Gendron has become a key part of the offence for the Gee-Gees, who have won four straight games and are 5-1 overall in Ontario University Athletics conference play.

...

Gendron had plenty of company in posting big numbers on Saturday. Maracle was on his game throughout, completing 20 of 23 passes for 354 yards, adding a second touchdown toss to Willie-Pierre Dimbonji.

Workhorse running back J.P. Cimankinda punished the Ravens defence on the ground, rushing for 166 yards on 31 carries, including two touchdowns. Kicker Campbell Fair made three of five field-goal attempts.

...

The Ravens struck first when quarterback Tanner DeJong connected with Kaseem Ferdinand for a 26-yard touchdown with 6:10 remaining in the opening quarter, but that was it for Carleton scoring.

The Gee-Gees led 10-7 at half-time, as TD Place air was full of potent smells and the traditional colourful back and forth chants between Ravens faithful in the north-side stands and Gee-Gees backers in the southern seats.

But, as the Gee-Gees continued to shut down the Ravens offence and delivered a series of extended drives in the third and fourth quarters, there was little doubt about who would finish on top.

“Just too many mistakes,” first-year Ravens head coach Corey Grant said. “They did a really good job, they had a really good game plan coming in. They executed better than us, and, you know, things just got out of hand at the end there.”

Photography by Greg Mason

Fattening the Panda

The results of the Panda Game, the annual rivalry game between Carleton University and uOttawa, were all tabulated some time ago on a page bearing that very name. Most entries now include at least a partial game summary as well.

So now that the basics are down, the goal moving forward is to provide greater detail surrounding those contests including the antics involving its coveted prize, Pedro the Panda. 

Starting at the beginning seemed to make sense. I tracked down what appears to be the first mention of Pedro in the Ottawa Citizen from October 4th, 1955. 

Sure enough, Pedro was stolen two days later. It took all of two days for a tradition of mascot-based shenanigans to begin.

I knew I'd found a picture of a couple of Carleton players posing with Pedro following this game so he had either been recovered or replaced in short order. In fact, he parachuted in some time during the fourth quarter. 

So a pretty eventful debut for the city's favourite stuffed (at the time) bear.

I'll continue looking for details of his adventures over the decades in which he was particularly active. For now, in addition to the articles above, a more detailed summary for the 1955 contest was added at the bottom of the Panda Game page. 

2021 Panda Game: uOttawa 19, Carleton 17

Gathering some Panda Game goodies from here, there and everywhere. The image below is from the Gee-Gees Instagram account, if i recall correctly. 

Photo Copied From the Gee-Gees Football Instagram Account

Ottawa Sun, Oct 3rd, 2021, by Ken Warren: In yet another Panda Game that twisted and turned with wild momentum shifts and a healthy dose of Mother Nature for good measure, it was a perfectly fair finish for the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees at TD Place stadium on Saturday afternoon.

Campbell Fair, that is.

Fair, the Gee-Gees kicker, blocked out the noise of the rain-drenched, sold-out crowd of 15,000 before booting a game-winning 45-yard field goal with exactly one minute remaining to cap a 19-17 win over the Carleton Ravens.

The kick tied the Panda Game record for longest field goal, set by current Ottawa Redblacks and former Gee-Gees kicker Lewis Ward in 2017.

They don’t come any more clutch that this one, flipping the score in the Gee-Gees’ favour after Ravens kicker Brandon Forcier put the Ravens ahead 17-16 with a 32-yard field goal with 3:53 to go.

“It’s definitely the biggest moment of my career, for sure,” Fair said, speaking a good 30 minutes after a crowd of spirited students emptied onto the field post-game, as per Panda Game tradition. “I’m just trying to think of the the mechanics in the most basic form, getting the right part of my foot through the right part of the ball.”

For the raucous and rowdy crowd of Gee-Gees fans in the north-side stands, the kick was a reward for sticking around through the downpour and a game in which both injury-depleted offences struggled to sustain drives.

....

The victory was the first of the season for the Gee-Gees after a pair of losses. It also came following a pre-game tribute to Francis Perron, the Gee-Gees defensive lineman who died following the first game of the season in Toronto on Sept. 18. Gee-Gees head coach Marcel Bellefeuille credited his entire team for being able to focus in the crucial moments on Saturday.

Of course, the win wouldn’t have happened unless Fair hit it between the uprights from 45 yards out.

“I give him all the credit,” Bellefeuille said. “Thursday (in practice), we put him in that situation, just like (Saturday), from 35 yards out, for a 42-yarder, and he didn’t make it. He walked off the field and I said, ‘You’ll make it in the game.’ I’m really happy for the young man. He nailed it.”

Bellefeuille also praised his team for not losing their cool after losing a fourth-quarter lead.

The Gee-Gees led 16-7, but a pair of fumbles from Nathan Walker — one after a reception and one on a punt return — allowed the Ravens to rally. Before Fortier’s field goal, Ravens quarterback Reid Vankoughnett connected with Khalik Johnson for a 13-yard touchdown pass, narrowing the Gee-Gees’ lead to 16-14.

...

After losing No. 1 and 2 quarterbacks Tanner DeJong and Tristan Lefebvre to injuries in a win over Queen’s on Sept. 25, the Ravens were forced to dig deep into the depth chart, with rookies Vankoughnett and Tristan Rinaldis seeing their first university action in the Panda Game spotlight.

Vankoughnett got the start and had some initial success by handing off over and over again. Nathan Carter capped off an impressive opening drive by scoring on a six-yard touchdown run. Carter finished the afternoon with 108 yards rushing on his way to breaking the Raven’s career rushing record that had been held by Mark Brown since 1988.

From there, though, the Ravens offence stalled and the Gee-Gees worked their way back into the game. The Gee-Gees first hit the scoreboard courtesy of a 12-yard field goal from Fair after an extended drive that featured a superb catch by Daniel Oladejo on a pass from quarterback Ben Maracle and a questionable pass-interference call.

The big play of the first half was a 64-yard touchdown pass from Maracle to Tristan Park. Park was wide open before making the catch and scampering into the end-zone.

As rain picked up, neither team had much success moving the ball, the contest becoming a game of punting and field position. The Ravens also conceded a safety in the first half.

Vankoughnett, who went 3-for-19 passing for 13 yards in the first half, was replaced by Rinaldis to start the second half. Rinaldis struggled to move the ball and Ravens coach Steve Sumarah gave the ball back to Vankoughnett in the fourth quarter.

The Gee-Gees, meanwhile, lost Maracle to a third-quarter injury, bringing back-up Matt Mahler into the game.

“Another typical Panda Game,” Ravens head coach Steve Sumarah said. “It’s never over until it’s over. You know … At the end of the game, they made some plays.”

....

With the victory, the Gee-Gees hold a 34-18 Panda Game edge overall.

...

Bellefeuille said the atmosphere of the Panda Game never gets old.

“That’s why it has been around so long,” he said. “Nothing against the Carleton guys, but that Ottawa crowd was rocking over there. I was so happy they were on the north side because some of them were dry and covered (in the seats). I was impressed with the crowd.”

Just Added: The 1987 & 1988 Panda Games

It was difficult to include while cropping but the headline to this article was "Defence Carries Ravens to Victory in Panda Game".

The "related story" that is referred to at the end is not about the game but the events surrounding it. A railing on the north side of the stands gave way at half time causing a number of people to fall more than 12 feet onto the concrete below. Roughly 30 people were sent to the hospital and there was some thought that the Panda Game should be shelved.

Attendance dipped from 17,000 or so to 1,500 in 1988 for a game held on Thanks giving Monday. It would take a few years for the game to restore its place on the football landscape.

The Strange, Strange 1983 Ottawa U. Gee-Gees Season

Continuing to add game results, I decided today to spend a bit of time on the Gee-Gees.

Unfortunately, I'd reached a difficult point in the team's history. I knew that their 1983 and 1984 seasons were rather...underwhelming, but didn't fully grasp the speed at which they collapsed. 

They were coming off a 7-0 regular season (but first-round playoff exit) in 1982. That team's coach, Joe Moss, was hired by the Argos in February of 1983 and replaced by Jim Clark early the following month.

Let's cut to a quote from the new head coach from just prior to the start of the season. 

That pass-heavy system was the run and shoot, the so-called "offense of the future" that you no longer read about now that we're in the future. My recollection of it at the time, in the NFL at least, is that teams always struggled with it early. Let's bear that in mind as we embark this downward spiral.

The Gee-Gees travelled to Concordia in week one and were upended by the Stingers. They threw at least three interceptions in a 33-10 loss. 

That would be the rule, not the exception. They lost their home opener to Bishop's the following week by a score of 43-21, a game after which Clark called out his defensive veterans publicly, then threw a staggering seven interceptions at McGill a week after that.

But Carleton would be next, so no doubt the guys would get up for that one. And perhaps a QB change will help. Let's hear from coach Clark again.

Sure, it can't be the system, it must be everyone playing it incorrectly. Another thing about the run and shoot is that those who believed in it rode it to death. Well, maybe Sommerville will have better success with it. 

The Gee-Gees lost to their crosstown rivals 28-23.

The team then set a dubious mark by finding a way to have negative points in the standings. 

Imagine if they didn't win a game the rest of the year and ended with -2 points in the standings? It would be pretty damn hard to ever lose THAT spot in history. Who the hell would ever have -3? How would you even go about achieving that penalty? Would you have to murder someone at midfield?

But the Gee-Gees found an innovative way to avoid having that black spot on their record forevermore. 

First, they hosted Queen's and after four straight losses, managed a tie in that match-up. Things were looking up!

Then the following week, they travelled to play Queen's again and...tied that game too!

And just like that, they were back to zero points in the standings. And it was actually an improvement! 

Naturally, such a miserable season could only end with a loss in the Panda Game. But to make it a touch more painful, let's blow a three-TD lead in doing so. 

Well, at least things could only get better after such a miserable season, right?

No. The Gee-Gees would go 0-7 in 1984 so those two ties in 1983 would seem like high points by comparison.

But 1983 wasn't all bad. Some guys earned individual recognition. 

U. of O. wouldn't crack a .500 record again until 1988 with Jim Daley at the helm. I might just rush my way through this soft spot in their history.

Just Added: 1997 Panda Game

Just Added: 1978 Panda Game

I don't know why it took so long to get this one done because it was super easy to find.

No special story, background or particular inspiration here, I just spotted a gap on the Panda Game page and filled it. 

We Should Know More About...Matt Anthony

The mention of Matt Anthony in the earlier post about the 1947 all-star team added a little emphasis to the breadth of his contributions to the game for me.

In adding game results for the Gee-Gees over the past few months, his name appeared constantly. And so it would, since he was head coach there for 15 years. I continued to come across it when doing the similar research for the Sooners.

His playing career is less celebrated (in my view, anyway), as is his coaching stint for the St Patrick's team, but when those are taken into account, he has impacted the game positively at the high school, junior, university and pro levels as either a coach or player. Very few people can make that claim.

Let's let the also seemingly ever-present Martin Cleary break it all down for us. The article below is in effect Anthony's sports obituary from the Ottawa Citizen following his passing in 2000.  

The article accurately states that Anthony was the Sooners head coach in 1971 but he was also an assistant on the 1970 team.

I've been trying to determine when he coached at St. Patrick but I can't seem to land on that. I'm not questioning whether or not he did, but I would like to see if he had his standard level of success there. This post will be updated if I finally manage to find those results.

Just Added: The 1993 and 1994 Panda Games

The Ottawa Citizen recaps for those games can be found on the "Panda Game" page above but in locating those I came across another game recap which might be of interest.

There is so much attention given to the Panda Game that it is sometimes easy to forget that not every game between these two teams is a Panda Game. They often played twice a year with one of those games designated as the Panda Game. 

The recap below is for an early season game in 1993 between U. of O. and Carleton in which Carleton finally snapped a lengthy losing streak. It sounds like it was generally sloppy but with a big finish.

As stated in that final paragraph, Carleton headed to Queen's the following weekend and pulled that one off too, in slightly more convincing fashion.

And...that would be that. They did not win a game the rest of the season, closing it out with a 2-5 record which included a Panda Game loss.

Not that the Gee-Gees fared much better; they ended up 3-4 and one-and-done in the playoffs. I doubt tying that first game against Carleton would have given them a much better playoff seeding and altered their fate much but that missed kick gave Carleton a little timely positivity.

Just Added: The 1976 Panda Game

The recap below was copied from the Ottawa Citizen dated October 25th, 1976. 

That Gee-Gees team was an interesting one. Coming off their national championship from the previous year, they won their first four games by shut out and averaged 44 points of their own. The first score against them was a single point on missed field goal in the first half of the fifth game of the season when they ultimately beat Queen's 26-07 in Kingston.

With the game below, it seems like things started to unravel.  They won it, but then lost to Queen's at home the following weekend by a score of 19-00. At that point they had won 18 straight games over the course of the past two seasons.

With the regular season concluded, they barely got through their first playoff game against Bishop's. It was played in Ottawa and the Gee-Gees won by a score of 22-20 when the Gaiters missed a field goal attempt with five seconds remaining in the game. They then went on to lose to Acadia in the Atlantic Bowl 18-16 when they failed to take advantage of a number of scoring opportunities and good field position.

I have not been able to find a specific turning point (such as a major injury) but I am curious as to what a member of that team would point to. Obviously they couldn't have been expected to win every game 44-00 but the speed with which they began to struggle is mysterious.

Just added: 1986 Panda Game Recap

Update On Updates

I've made quite a few updates to a number of pages on this blog but unless you were looking specifically for them, you couldn't possibly know about them.

Some are rather dry, "bookkeeping" types, like recording RedBlacks draft results. If you were looking to find out who the team drafted in 2017, there are several places you could look, but I prefer to keep that data here as well for my own reference.

Others are much harder to come by (like the 1952 Rough Rider draft results in the previous post). It is those ones that I wish to share with you today.

Rather than write out a few lines from some Panda Game recaps, when possible I've carved out the newspaper article(s) about the game and posted that under the score. I've done this for a few of the ones in the 80s and 90s, including the 1989 game below which included a rather good celebration pic.

Clicking on either image should make it easier to read, either off this post or on the Panda Game page itself.

I also dug up all the results from the Ottawa Sooners' 1974 National Championship season. That took more effort than I'd anticipated. Due to playing two two-game series in the playoffs, they actually played 16 games in total that season. Stats from the championship game are included now as well.

I'll segue from that to updates to the IJFL page. Several scores have been added to the long-defunct junior league but anyone interested in the early days of the Sooners should give that page a look. Many (all?) of the accomplishments from their first decade of existence are recorded there. I'll probably copy a lot of it onto their own page but as long as I have it in at least one place, that's good enough for now.

I've built a page for the Grey Cup. Again, this is mostly information you can get in many, many places, however I thought it would be interesting to copy directly from the newspapers of the time, mostly the Ottawa Citizen and Ottawa Journal. I'll probably add to that later today. I particularly liked finding the two-page spread of the 1926 champs.

Finally, on the Ottawa Trojans page, I've added an added an article about that team changing its name from Combines between 1943 and 1944 and picture which displays their uniform quite nicely. That's been hard to land.

This is all in addition to adding whatever details I come across about high school, midget and junior championships.