Photo: Greg Mason
Jacob Smith
Basketball can take you many places, and for Allie McCarthy, she’s been halfway across the country and back, now bringing experience and a wide range of skills to a Ottawa Gee-Gees team making a run. From Grand Falls, New Brunswick, to Hamilton, Ontario, to Grand Forks, North Dakota and finally in Ottawa, Ontario, Allie has played at many different levels. It all started at Fredericton High playing basketball in grade 10 and 11 and winning five NBIAA championships between grade 7 and grade 11.
Between years at Fredericton High, Allie played Kia Nurse Elite giving her prep experience against great American teams. That experience made up for what wouldn’t be in her final year of High School, having her one year at Lincoln Prep be without a season due to COVID in 2020.
During her year at Lincoln Prep, they didn’t have a season but playing against eachother in practice, and the overall strength of competition within the OSBA helped Allie prepare for the next level, which took her to the NCAA and the Summit League.
“I didn’t get to go on any in person visits because of COVID but I saw a lot of virtual visits and zoom calls,” Allie said of her decision to go to the University of North Dakota, “it seemed like a good fit, I would like the coaches and the team, everything about it.”
Allie played two years at North Dakota, playing in the Women’s Basketball Invitational Tournament in her second year, but getting used to the NCAA and Summit League game was an adjustment, “going in I knew there were a lot of good players on my team, we ended up doing really good,” Allie reflected on her first season in the NCAA. ”I didn’t know what to expect but it was super intense in practice, the Summit League is really good. I enjoyed it, it was very intense and all about basketball.”
North Dakota went 1-2 in the Invitational Tournament in Allie’s second year, and looking back on the experience Allie mentions just finding out about their seed shortly before, “It was pretty cool, we didn’t do as well as we thought we would in the Summit League tournament, we didn’t find out (about the invitational tournament) for a week after they made all the tournament selections.”
The tournament in Lexington Kentucky saw North Dakota go up against California Baptist University to kick it off where they lost 96-79, followed by a 102-99 win against NIU in overtime and ending the tournament with a 76-73 loss to Florida International University.
Allie got great NCAA experience playing in the Summit League with the North Dakota Fighting Hawks, but after her second year she felt like she needed to transfer somewhere closer to home. After narrowing down a list of potential U SPORTS schools, Allie made her decision to become a Gee-Gee, “after I decided to leave I knew I wanted to come back to Canada, be closer to home. I talked to a few U SPORTS schools, narrowed it down to three and came for a visit to Ottawa on my way back home.”
The University of Ottawa was not only closer to her home in New Brunswick, but also where she’d been before, and where family resides in Kanata, “I like Ottawa, i’ve been there before, I have family in Kanata. When I came (for the visit) I liked the coaches and the girls, I liked what they were saying, the culture and I thought we could be pretty good.”
“A bit of experience at a high level,” Allie said of what she brings to the 2023 Gee-Gees squad, “the whole team, we run the floor pretty well and we do that better every game. I try and get fast break buckets and rebound pretty hard. I always try and be a good teammate and make sure everyone is feeling good about themselves especially during games.”
Allie and the Gee-Gees have pushed themselves to a 10-2 record through the first half of the season, second in the OUA East. Running the floor and constantly getting better game by game has built the Gee-Gees confidence in their ability to be a top team and they show it every game, “once we started, our team chemistry started getting better and better…we can be a top team in the OUA and in the country when we play at our best. I think everyone has high expectations because we feel like we’re good.”
Two games into the second half of the season, Ottawa has rebounded from their nine-game winning streak coming to an end with a win. ”Coming into the second half, just keeping our confidence,” Allie McCarthy said of the teams’ expectations for the second half, “believing in each other, our game plan and our coaches. We don’t feel too much pressure or nerves, we’re excited.”
The Gee-Gees have been one of the OUA’s best for years, and under the leadership of a small core and the experience of eight new players, they’re forging their own path towards another playoff run. Allie’s abilities on both sides of the ball have shined more and more as games have gone on, and the potential for this Gee-Gees squad has went up and up.
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