By Denise Tom
First, Ottawa said goodbye to the Rough Riders, its Canadian Football League team. Then last March, Carleton University lost its football team, the Ravens. But while it appears football is slowly inching its way out of the city, the sport’s amateur football community says this isn’t so.
“It wasn’t a decline in popularity (that lead to the Ravens folding), just a funding problem,” says Wayne Chorney, president of the National Capital Amateur Football Association.
Despite the loss of the two teams, Chorney says there has not been a decrease of players between the ages of eight and 16.
In fact, not only is amatuer football surviving in the Ottawa-Carleton region, Chorney says it’s thriving.
“There are more kids playing football in this city than in some provinces,” he says. “It’s the best-kept secret in town.”
The amateur football league has about 50 teams and 1,600 participants, says Chorney.
In Centretown there are two football clubs, the Ottawa Colts and the Myers Riders. The Riders club is also home to one of the region’s two junior teams, made up of 20 to 23 year-old-players.
Some of the players on the Junior Riders are ex-Ravens. Although young athletes had played football at Carleton for 53 years, it just got too expensive, says Drew Love, Carleton’s director of athletics.
Love wrote the report recommending the cutting of the university’s football program, saying the athletic budget just could not handle the cost of running a football club.
Sandy Ruckstuhl, president of the Riders club, says it’s a shame the Ravens had to fold, but it hasn’t had a grave impact on junior football. The partipation hasn’t suffered and Ruckstuhl says if the Riders could be resurrected with better management, fans would support it.
“Any football fan knows you could never have too much football,” he says.
With or without a pro team, young players can still look to either the University of Ottawa team or either of the junior teams for role models in the sport to whom they can relate, says Chorney. He cites many former club players from the Ottawa area who have gone on to great things in football, playing with large American universities, in particular, Jesse Palmer, a quaterback with the Florida Gators.
“There are so many talented, talented kids,” says Chorney.
“People just don’t know how great theses players are, and I don’t know why. I guess it’s a matter of education and well, let’s face it, Canadians, for the most part, their priority is hockey. It’s too bad.”