Best of luck to long-time Carleton basketballer (player and coach) Taffe Charles, who's been hired to coach the Ravens women's hoops team. Understandably so, it looks like Carleton wants to do something to narrow the gulf between the success of the men's and women's teams.
Two followups to Wayne Kondro's article in today's Citizen and Mark Wacyk's post at cishoops.ca about Charles' promotion are (a) whether he can turn around the women's Ravens, who have averaged less than seven wins in the conference over the past four years and (b) how Charles' promotion affects Dave Smart's coaching staff for the five-time CIS champs next season.
A: Obviously, not a lot of people off-campus necessarily care who coaches the women's Ravens, but it matters to the Carleton athletic department. It can create the wrong impression to have a Cadillac men's team and a Pinto women's team -- the joke once associated with Brandon University was that Jerry Hemmings' phone bill was probably larger than the entire budget for the perennial also-ran women's Bobcats. That is probably not the case at Carleton, hence Taffe Charles' hiring.
Charles' biggest challenge seems to be recruiting. Carleton doesn't have a teachers' college, or offer kinesiology/physical education or sport management — all popular majors for athletes, female and male — although the school's investment in the business program has been a recruiting boon for the men's basketball team. Post-secondary students across Ontario are also staying closer to home (thank Mike Harris for that) and the OUA has long been a hometown league. This means McMaster, Western, and Brock get the inside track on players from the 519/905 belt (Burlington, Hamilton, London, Brantford, the Niagara Peninsula, et al.) where the women's basketball talent pool runs deepest in Ontario. To some 18-year-olds down there and their parents, Ottawa might as well be on the other side of the world.
Recruiting from there to Eastern Ontario is doable -- just ask Dave Wilson at Queen's. Carleton's two best women's players, Ines Jelic and Susan Shaw-Davis, hail from London and Hamilton respectively, and sophomore-to-be Kelly Killoran, an OUA East rookie all-star last season, is from Sarnia.
Charles will have a lot of selling points: Good sports facilities, a university with a burgeoning reputation, guaranteed fan support (since people always have to get out to the Ravens' Nest early to stake out a spot for the men's games) and the chance to start a winning tradition. He can probably deliver some improvement until he becomes the next coach to jump from the women's game back to a head coaching job with a men's program, like two of the Final 8 coaches Carleton faced this season, Brandon's Barnaby Craddock and Acadia's Les Berry.
B: As a sidebar, one would like to think Ravens assistant coach Rob Smart, the one-time Ernestown Secondary School star who was a big part of Carleton's 2001 and '03 Final 8 teams, would get a chance to add to his coaching responsiblities now that Charles is with the women's Ravens. With eight years at Carleton as a player and coach, the 28-year-old Smart's coaching credentials are pretty impressive.
(Full disclosure: Rob Smart played at ESS around the same time I was spot-welded to the Eagles bench, so me saying we're "former teammates" is like the janitor at Microsoft calling Bill Gates a colleague. Still, we're obligated to plug the ol' alma mater.)
Related:
Charles nets job as Ravens women's hoops coach (Wayne Kondro, Ottawa Citizen; link via Mark Wacyk's cishoops.ca)
That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.
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