Carleton fell just short of a comeback as kicker Ethan Farahani missed a 49-yard kick in his first game as a Raven. The result puts the Ravens at a five-game losing streak this season and brought the Gee-Gees season to 4-2.

Going into Sunday’s sold-out game, the Ravens were the returning champions after defeating the Gee-Gees 20-14 last fall.

More than 24,000 fans filled TD Place arena in Lansdowne for the 57th Panda Game. The event is consistently the most attended university football game in the country.

Ottawa police and bylaw officers were out in full force this weekend, with an increased presence on Bank Street, TD Place, and areas surrounding the venue. No major incidents were reported.

Fireworks crackled as the Gee-Gees’ Zachary Copeland kicked off the game with a field goal in the first quarter, putting uOttawa in an early lead. Carleton put an end to uOttawa’s lead with Zacharie Georges putting the Ravens on the scoreboard late in the first quarter.

In the final seconds of the first quarter, Carleton increased their lead as the Ravens’ Joshua Awoodzie scored a 27-yard touchdown after intercepting a pass by uOttawa quarterback Josh Janssen.

Early in the second quarter, the Gee-Gees regained their lead, taking the score to 17-14 with a touchdown by Devaughn Blackwood. Shortly after, Farahani tied the score with a 37-yard field goal.

Blackwood took a short pass in the final seconds of the second quarter, pushing the Gee-Gees back into the lead at 24-17 just before half-time.

In the third quarter, uOttawa shot ahead even more, increasing their lead by 15 points. A touchdown by Souleymane Camara in the quarter’s final seconds put the score at 32-17.

The third quarter saw Carleton stage a 15-point comeback, which fell just short as the last-minute field goal by Farahani missed its target.

The Gee-Gees currently sit at sixth place in the 11-team Ontario University Athletics (OUA) football standings, with the Ravens sitting in 10th place.

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After dropping the first game of the 2026 Frontier League Championship Series against the Evansville Otters, the Ottawa Titans made a resounding comeback, winning the next three games and bringing the league’s trophy home. 

Pardinho, a Toronto Blue Jays alum, closed the game at 4-0 for Ottawa, with an eliminating throw to Evansville’s Amani Jones.  

The Titans and staff alike rushed the field, throwing arms around each other and celebrating the franchise’s first-ever Frontier League championship.

The crowd erupted early on in the game as Jackie Urbaez gave Ottawa an early 1-0 lead in the first inning with a 114-metre hit across Ottawa Stadium. 

A double from AJ Wright sent Myles Smith from second to home, and increased Ottawa’s lead soon after. The lead extended to 3-0 as Jake Steels lobbed a double to left field, seeing Urbaez score his second run of the night. 

Wright and Urbaez went 3-for-4 and 2-for-4, respectively, in RBIs.

Ottawa pitcher Ky Hampton sent 16 Evansville batters back to the dugout as he struck out seven and capped off eight scoreless innings. 

Hampton accepted the Frontier League Playoff MVP award with tears in his eyes and soaked in champagne. Then, he handed the trophy to Urbaez, a five-year veteran of the team, in a sign of comradery. 

“I don’t think I can accept this award, this is my first year here,” Hampton said. “I want to give it to a guy who’s been here for five years, he’s the heart and soul of the team.” 

Urbaez accepted the award as teammates cheered “Jackie, Jackie, Jackie,” pointing to the fans in Ottawa Stadium. “You guys have been amazing for five years, getting better every single year,” he said. 

The atmosphere in the stadium on Saturday was unlike anything he had ever seen, security guard Emmanuel Tshilombo told Ottawa Compass News. 

Tshilombo, who has worked a number of sporting events for Capital Security & Investigations, said that Ottawa fans came out in full force, describing young fans clamouring for souvenirs or balls. He also described the game as an important moment for sports in the city. 

“It’s a good stepping stone for Ottawa, and I just see a lot of young talents, a lot of kids playing on the sidelines, and they look up to this,” he said. “Seeing them win, it’s a great achievement and it’s gonna help this city a lot.” 

The team set an MLB Partner League attendance record in the third game of the series on Friday, with 10,303 tickets sold. Game four was played before a crowd of over 9,000.

Many in attendance on Saturday said the night was a big moment for Ottawa sports, especially as the Ottawa Redblacks are facing a particularly difficult season. Notably, many in the stands wore Toronto Blue Jays jerseys. 

The game occurred the same week the Blue Jays were knocked out of playoff contention in the MLB.

“The Ottawa sports world needed this a lot,” Titans fan Sam Hartt told Ottawa Compass News. “I think everyone needed this. It was an amazing game and an amazing night.” 

“Since the first inning, the atmosphere of the game was unbelievable. It was great to see everyone coming out, families and kids all coming out to see this Ottawa team pull it together,” Hartt said. 

“What a heck of a team,” the Titans’ manager, Bobby Brown, said during celebrations on the field. 

“This doesn’t happen anywhere else. Come back next year, we’re after [the championship] again,” Brown said. 

Next season, the Ottawa Titans will return to play in the National Association of Professional Baseball, the rebranded Frontier League. A new schedule will be released in the coming weeks, the team said in a news release.

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Those in the youth sports space say the hardest part of getting Canadian kids into soccer isn’t convincing them to watch the World Cup — it’s making sure they can afford to play after the tournament ends.

That’s the challenge the federal government says it’s trying to address with a new program to build 25 community soccer pitches across Canada over the next four years.

Just this week, Secretary of State for Sport Adam van Koeverden announced a community soccer pitch in Surrey B.C.

“We want sports to be available for everyone who wants to play, because we know that talent is everywhere across our country but we want opportunities to be right across our country as well,” van Koeverden said in an interview with iPolitics.

The pitches are intended to remove barriers to participation by offering free access and equipment-sharing stations where children can borrow soccer balls through an app, van Koeverden said.

When asked what success from the program would look like, van Koeverden said “joy on kids’ faces” and the inspiration “given to the next generation” is one of the ways to measure success.

The project is being launched with Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities, a national charity that helps children overcome financial and accessibility barriers to sport and recreation.

Jumpstart President Marco Di Buono said major sporting events create an “inspiration effect” that encourages children to try a new sport, but that excitement only lasts if families have affordable places to play.

“The key is to capitalize on that inspiration effect by making sure that access to those sports are sustainable over the long term,” Di Buono said in an interview with iPolitics.

But converting that excitement into long-term participation remains one of Canada’s biggest challenges. In its report released this spring, the Future of Sport in Canada Commission concluded that financial barriers remain among the country’s biggest obstacles to participation, warning that rising costs are making organized sport increasingly exclusive.

“The number one barrier to sport participation, no matter where you are in the world, quite honestly is cost,” Di Buono said.

Because of COVID restrictions, Canadian youth sport participation dropped by 14 percentage points between 2018 and 2020, according to Statistics Canada. While the numbers largely recovered since then, Di Buono pointed to rising inflation in the past years that has made participation less affordable for an average Canadian family.

“We know from our parents that this is becoming a problem,” he said.

The average cost to participate in sport per child is about $3,000, according to the State of Youth Sport Report. The cost includes registration fees, transportation, equipment, and apparel.

While some sports are less expensive than others, Di Buono said parents are finding it increasingly difficult to “prioritize” sport over essential household expenditures.

For Di Buono, the concern extends beyond whether children sign up for a sport, it’s whether they stay in it. While events like the FIFA World Cup can inspire young athletes to pick up a soccer ball, he said rising costs risk turning that excitement into a short-lived experience rather than a lifelong habit.

That growing emphasis on affordability could be reflected in Ottawa’s broader approach to sport policy.

As part of the Spring Economic Update, the federal government pledged a five-year investment of $755 million in Canada’s sport system, with $118 million annually after under its ‘playground to podium” program. The funding is intended to strengthen grassroots participation, support national sport organizations and high-performance athletes, and help communities capitalize on major sporting events.

Di Buono said the strategy marks a shift from Canada’s previous emphasis on high-performance sport. In the lead-up to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, he said governments focused much of their investment on helping Canadian athletes win medals through the Own the Podium program, an initiative launched after Canada failed to win an Olympic gold medal on home soil.

While the program largely succeeded, Di Buono said the focus on elite sport came at the expense of growing participation on the grassroots level.

“It’s not that we ignored the need to get as many people to participate as possible, the resources to do it were ignited and it was really a question of what were seen as competing priorities at the time,” he said.

Today, he said, policymakers increasingly recognize that grassroots participation and elite sport are not competing goals, but part of the same pipeline.

“We need to think about the continuum from playground to podium if we really want the ecosystem in Canada to thrive to its full capability,” he added.

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The pro women’s hockey team put forward a valiant effort to extend the PWHL championship series on home ice on Wednesday, but fell short to the Montreal Victorie, who clinched the Walter Cup title with a 4-0 win.

The Victorie were in the driver’s seat from the start of the best-of-five series, running out to an early 2-0 advantage, thanks to two consecutive overtime victories.

When the series moved to Ottawa, the Charge were able to cool off the Victorie, taking Game 3 by a 2-1 margin.

But it was only a temporary reprieve as the Victorie put on a defence masterclass to shut out the Charge in Game 4.

It’s the second straight season the Charge have lost in the finals series.

But there’s a silver lining for the team — the Charge broke the PWHL playoff attendance record by drawing nearly 17,000 fans for Game 3 at the Canadian Tire Centre.

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It’s the team’s second consecutive trip to the Walter Cup Finals, but Ottawa is hoping to bring home the title for the first time in the franchise’s young history.

The Charge entered the playoffs as an underdog as the last seed in the four-team bracket. But Ottawa upset Boston in four games to secure a spot in the finals.

As the higher seed, Montreal will host the first two games of the best-of-five series. Ottawa will host Game 3 and Game 4, if necessary.

If the series goes the distance, Montreal will host the deciding Game 5.

Ottawa has moved out from TD Place Arena for the playoffs, opting to play at the much bigger Canadian Tire Centre.

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The baseball team announced that it has sold out tickets for its May 8 home opener, breaking a single-game attendance record for the league.

The team said its sold all 10,278 tickets for the stadium, building off a 16 per cent increase in attendance in 2025.

“We’re incredibly proud of the support Ottawa-Gatineau has shown,” Martin Boyce, Titans’ general manager said in a statement.

“I can’t think of a better city — or better fans — to set a new league attendance record.”

First pitch for the May 8 game against the four-time defending Frontier League champion Québec Capitales is set for 7 p.m.

There will be live pre- and in-game entertainment to mark the occasion, including food trucks and a jersey giveaway to the first 5,000 fans who enter Ottawa Stadium.

The team has also set its sights on the largest single-day fundraising event for the Ottawa Titans Field of Dreams Foundation to date. Fundraising includes auctions throughout the game, donation opportunities, and the largest 50/50 draw. The record funds raised will support children’s charities in the National Capital Region, according to the team.

The previous mark for the highest-attended Frontier League game was set on July 4, 1997, by the Johnstown Steal with 10,250 fans.

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The defending champions started their campaign earlier this month by dropping two games, before finally getting into the win column against the expansion FC Supra du Québec.

Atletico played its first home game last Sunday against Vancouver, with the two teams finishing the game tied at 1.

On Friday, Ottawa hits the road again to take on the unbeaten Inter Toronto FC.

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The Brantford Bulldogs, Barrie Colts and Ottawa 67’s occupied the top three spots in the OHL’s Eastern Conference nearly all year long.

And unsurprisingly, they all made it into the conference’s semifinals.

The Colts, the second-seed, needed five games to dispense of the 67’s, while the top-seed Bulldogs swept North Bay.

The Eastern Conference final series opened earlier this week, with Brantford taking Game 1 4-3. Game 2 is set for tomorrow.

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The Colts took the first two games of the series back in Barrie, but Ottawa clawed back with a win in Game 3 on home ice on Tuesday.

A win by Barrie tonight will give the Colts the chance to put away the 67’s at home on Saturday. But a 67’s win ensures the series returns to Ottawa for Game 6 on Sunday.

Puck drop is set for 7 p.m.

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The teams finished second and third, all but ensuring they would face off if they won their first round playoff series.

They did that in style.

The second-seed Barrie Colts eliminated Niagara in five games. The third-place Ottawa 67’s swept Kingston in four.

And with first-place Brantford cruising past their competition, the Colts and 67’s will play in the second-round of the playoffs, with Game 1 in Barrie set to go Thursday night.

The winner of the best-of-seven series will play either Brantford or fifth-seed North Bay in the conference championship, with a spot in the OHL title on the line.

The winner of the OHL championship will play in the Memorial Cup.

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