“It’s like an event, I feel like I’m at a family gathering”
On any given Friday or Saturday night, it is a stereotype the University of Ottawa’s campus might seem a little quiet.
Be it because Ottawa is a government town; partygoers have already left for Elgin Street or the ByWard Market; or those that live away from the city have already commuted home, the campus’s reputation isn’t exactly unearned.
That is, if you don’t know where to look.
Deep inside Montpetit Hall — the 1970s-era gymnasium in the centre of the university’s downtown campus — a buzz is building so loud that Eric Dissanayake’s Apple Watch is telling him to go somewhere quiet for a bit, then come back.
It’s over 100 decibels inside Montpetit Hall on this particular Saturday night, as the Gee-Gees women’s basketball team is erupting for a 23-11 second quarter on route to an 81-53 blowout over the visiting Windsor Lancers.
A 20-point, five-three performance from second-year guard Bailey Russell is the specific force thrusting the Gees to their first provincial championship appearance and national championship berth in six years — a span longer than Dissanayake, the fifth-year captain of the men’s volleyball team, has been at the U of O for.
Joining Dissanayake in the courtside seats facing the Gee-Gees bench during the doubleheader — like most other nights where the basketball teams took to Montpetit this year — was a host of other student athletes and members of the Gee-Gees community.
Melina De Iulio (a 2024 graduate from the women’s basketball team), Daniel Briere (a linebacker on the football team), Eric Cumberbatch (a cornerback on the football team), Ryan Harris and Alex VanderByl (Dissanayake’s teammates on the men’s volleyball team), Cole Newton (a 2024 graduate of the men’s basketball team), Aurora Bowie (a 2025 graduate of the women’s rugby team and the U SPORTS player of the year), and Kwabena-Nana Gyimah have all been prominent figures on the top third of OUA.TV’s broadcast every time the Gees host an opponent at Montpetit Hall this year.
It’s Gyimah, a 5’11” linebacker for the Gee-Gees football team, who has drawn the most ire of opposing OUA players, coaches, and referees alike during the course of the men’s and women’s basketball seasons.
“The OUA, at the start of last season, they implemented a rule where your seats have to be five feet back from the court,” said Gyimah, known affectionately around campus as “KJ”.
“That wasn’t a rule before [the U of O] courtside started … you can see throughout the season, the seats start getting pushed back further and further [as] refs start to get annoyed with us.”
The Vancouver Canucks had the Green Men; the Buffalo Bills have their Mafia; the Chicago Cubs have Bleacher Creatures; Duke has the Cameron Crazies; Illinois has the Orange Krush; and the Gee-Gees have… the Stable?
Ok, the name’s a work in progress, but the work that Dissanayake, Gyimah, De Iulio and Co. have put in in the past three years is not. Gyimah and Dissanayake agree that the growth towards the student section that will greet Queen’s on Saturday began with a 2023 student-athlete barbeque.
“That [barbeque] was the first time, [for] me personally, seeing teams talk to one another, whether it was soccer, football, whatever club level, varsity grey, varsity garnet, whatever it was — that’s how it started,” said Gyimah.
Since then, Gyimah and Dissanayake both agree that the current student section, made up of athletes and alumni of more than a handful of sports, has grown exponentially — not just for basketball, but for other winter sports, like women’s volleyball.
It was natural, attending games during a 2023 season where the Gee-Gees men’s team would go on to win the program’s third Wilson Cup and the Gee-Gees women’s team would make the OUA semifinals after finishing 18-4 when Gyimah and Dissanayake would find an outlet to continue their love of basketball.
Gyimah and Dissanayake grew up basketball fans and players at heart, with both playing on their respective high school teams. Gyimah, from Hamilton, helped his high school’s junior Cathedral Gaels to a city championship in 2018 and was in close proximity as the Toronto Raptors won their first NBA championship a year later.
Dissanayake was introduced to the game five hours north in Sudbury, though with bonds to the Raptors just as tight, as his father grew up in Toronto.
Both arrived on the U of O’s campus during COVID, and after joining their respective teams took a couple years to get more involved; Dissanayake with the Student Athletic Council (SAC), and Gyimah with the Black Student-Athletes Advisory Council (BSAAC).
Gyimah’s first basketball game and courtside experience at Montpetit Hall was in 2021, during his first year with the football team. “When you’re on courtside, it’s an experience,” said the Hamilton native.
“Yeah, you’re watching the game, but you’re interacting with the people that are playing. You’re trying to get that home court advantage, trying to give your team an edge, and make them know that you’re here for them. So I think after people started seeing that it was kind of an activity, you’re not just sitting watching the game — that’s when more people started coming in,” added Gyimah.
For Dissanayake, his first game came a year later, when the Gee-Gees played Laurentian. Dissanayake wasn’t exactly there to see the Gee-Gees, but rather his friends from Sudbury.
“Especially compared to now, there wasn’t that campus or Gee-Gees hype around going to those games,” explained the fifth-year.
Flash forward a few years, and tickets have become hard to come by for big games. Chairs? Good luck. Tickets for the Gee-Gees Wilson Cup game against the Queen’s Gaels were released on Sunday, following the team’s win over the TMU Bold, and sold out early Tuesday afternoon.
“When you’re in Montpetit [Hall], the gym is the highlight,” describes Gyimah. “The background is dark, the ambiance around the court, it’s just different. You walk into the gym and you see our teams, our women walking in, our men walking in, and they’re straight about business.”
Gyimah says that the crowd feels connected to the players; both showmen like Brock Newton or Jacques-Mélaine Guemeta and lunch-pail, head-down assassins like Khalifa Koulamallah, Allie McCarthy, or Enora Touloute.
You’re trying to get that home court advantage, trying to give your team an edge, and make them know that you’re here for them
It’s Touloute, a second-year wing, who The Stable has grown particularly fond of this season. 5’11” and sporting a wingspan at least six inches longer than her height, the Repentigny, Q.C. native joined the Gee-Gees a season ago but made her way into Rose-Anne Joly’s rotation at the start of her sophomore year.
Dissanayake says it was VanderByl, his teammate on the volleyball team, who started referring to Touloute as one of “Gruden’s Grinders” — a half-serious term coined by longtime NFL coach and media personality Jon Gruden. The moniker has stuck.
“I just like guys who love to play,” Gruden described to ESPN’s Paul Gutierrez in 2018. “Guys that will compete. Guys that will play for nothing. We haven’t signed a lot of household names around the league, but we have brought in guys that are going to be consistent, everyday grinders, man. Guys that are going to compete their ass off and fight for inches and know what to do and set a tone.”
Dissanayake says, “It’s cliché, but she plays the game the right way,” adding that Touloute is just one part of what makes the women’s team so fun to watch.
Because of course, with OUA First Team All-Star Natsuki Szczokin averaging more than four steals a game; OUA Third Team All-Star Allie McCarthy prone to go off for a quiet 20 on any given night; and Alissa Provo, Emily Payne, Victoria Brideau, Ivany Rheault-Langué, and Sophie-Anne Bouffard rounding out a typical Gees rotation, it’s hard to pick a favourite player.
Oh yeah, and Bailey Russell. “Back to Bailey Russell,” could stand as both my segue here into talking about the second-year sharpshooter or a commentary line from Garry Gallimore on any given OUA.TV broadcast on a Saturday night.
Followed, of course, by a fastbreak three from the Fredericton, N.B. native. It was after two such triples in 20 seconds from Russell during last Saturday’s OUA semifinals that Dissanayake’s watch gave him a noise warning.
“The only other place you’re getting that on a weekend [in Ottawa] is maybe Heart & Crown, five feet from a speaker,” says Dissanayake. “There’s nothing better, especially when they’re playing those tight games, it’s electric.”
Gyimah contends that it’s bigger than basketball. “It’s like an event, I feel like I’m at a family gathering.”
Though Dissanyake, Gyimah, and the rest of The Stable have seen some incredible players take to the court during the early game over the past few seasons — like Brigitte Lefebvre-Okankwu and Ariane Saumure — they both agree that the 2025 iteration of the team is ready to go all the way.
“It’s clicking, you can understand what they have here,” said Gyimah. “They’re not taking it for granted, so it’s just seeing that, having that feeling of knowing that everyone here wants to play for a championship, wants the nationals … and they understand that. They’re not like, ‘maybe next year,’ they want to prove themselves every time they’re on the court, and they want to be great.”
Dissanayake adds that the first nationals berth in six years for the program — and the first for Rose-Anne Joly — was noticeably special, not just for the fans, but the players, even those who have only been here for a couple of years.
“You could see how much it meant to the players,” said the fifth-year. “It was a 30-point blowout… and the whole team is cheering and jumping in a circle after qualifying for nationals. You can see how much it means to the players, and it makes it mean that much more to us as fans as well.”
During the second half of the win over Windsor, Dissanayake was approached by Bianca Lapensée, the associate supervisor, athletic event management for the Gee-Gees, a familiar face around Montpetit on any given basketball night.
You walk into the gym and you see our teams, our women walking in, our men walking in, and they’re straight about business.
It was then that Dissanayake was tasked with helping coordinate getting student athletes from the U of O campus to the Raven’s Nest on Saturday — and then back to Montpetit Hall, given the men won their game against TMU, which of course they did, a couple of hours later. Dissanayake says that more than 50 student-athletes will be making the trip across town and helping balance out the Ravens crowd at 6 p.m., before returning to cheer on the men at 8 p.m.
Back in Montpetit, with more chairs being brought in, packing the hall to maximum fire code capacity, Eric and KJ are sticking to a familiar script.
Related Posts
- Men leap out to 19-0 start, never look back in semifinal drubbing of TMU – The Fulcrum
- Russell catches fire; women punch first ticket to nationals in six years – The Fulcrum
- #2 Gees leap out to massive lead early, blowout Laurentian in quarterfinals – The Fulcrum
- Gee-Gees enter as OUA favourites as Stajic and Co. gear up for playoffs – The Fulcrum
“There’s no need to switch up the game plan,” says Gyimah, as the men look to continue an 18-game winning streak. “But I hate Carleton, I hate Queen’s,” adds the fourth-year, the ringleader of the courtside antics that have made him a beloved figure by Gee-Gees fans, players, and coaches.
Dissanayake says that because Queen’s and Carleton are such fierce rivals, especially to the general student body, compared to Windsor and TMU, there’s going to be a “more personal level” on display Saturday.
“There’s two schools that just light a fire,” says Gyimah. I think maybe there’ll be a bit more passion — a lot more passion — especially in the Raven’s Nest against Carleton. Against Queen’s, they’re bringing their football team, and that’s just going to get me more fired up. So it’s going to be a lot more yelling, a lot more personal stuff. I got something for Temu Syllas, [referring to Queen’s star Lukas Syllas]. I got a lot. I’m ready. I’ve just been thinking about it, thinking about which ways I can get them off of their ‘A’ game. So nothing’s gonna change, just the level of passion you’re going to see.”
