By Kaitlyn LeBoutillier
With just four days between their provincial championship tournament in Whitby and the start of their national event in Regina, Chloe Chalmers and Leine Biro packed a pile of lacrosse into a short period this summer. And the Gloucester Lady Griffins/Team Ontario pair came away with a pair of medals to show from the 12 games they played over the course of nine tournament days in August.
Coach Mary James, who was behind the bench for both events, had a feeling from early on that a special season could be brewing. The core of the Lady Griffins’ under-22 team had been playing together for eight years and had always dreamed of winning a provincial title. This season, they added two players from out of town who play for the University of Ottawa.
“We’ve been a very small program for the past couple years,” notes Chalmers, the Lady Griffins’ goalie. “We’ve had not even 10 runners before, but this year, we had a full bench, so it was pretty exciting, because we knew we had a shot.”
The Lady Griffins built momentum by winning their home Ray Broadworth Memorial Tournament earlier in the season, as well as one other away tournament. Then, while competing in the ‘B’ level of the U22 women’s division at the Ontario Lacrosse Festival, Gloucester started off with a bang, beating Mississauga 8-1. But after that 9 a.m. contest, the Lady Griffins lost their 7:30 p.m. match later that day to St. Catharines 4-2.
“It wasn’t our best game. I think we were a little tired,” signals James. “We had a really long break between our two games and I think that breaks kind of didn’t really help us.”
Gloucester responded with 6-1 and 9-0 victories over Windsor and Six Nations to reach the semi-finals. The Lady Griffins prevailed 7-4 over Peterborough in the semi to setup a rematch against St. Catharines in the championship game a few hours later.
“I’ve been playing for eight years now and we’d never beat [Peterborough] before, but we beat them in that semi-final, so that was a huge confidence-boost for us. It was really special moment,” Chalmers reflects, noting the team felt confident in advance of the championship game despite the earlier defeat to the same opponent.
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“It wasn’t a bad loss, so there was no bad mindset or anything like that,” she adds. “Everyone was pretty sure of themselves. We thought ‘Yeah, we can do this.’”
Biro, who plays defence, knew that Gloucester would need to hold St. Catharines’ attack in check, and also find a way to score a few goals.
“The goalie on their team was really strong,” Biro recounts. “Once we realized we had to play St. Catharines in the finals, we just kind of had a meeting to regroup, and were like, ‘Okay, guys, we really have to focus on the goalie.’”
St. Catharines struck first in the final with the only goal of the first period. But Gloucester equalized with a Justine Paradis goal in the second period, assisted by Isabelle Lavergne, and then both of those players added one more goal each in the third period to give the Lady Griffins a 3-1 triumph.
“When the final buzzer went off, it was almost like we had won the Stanley Cup,” Biro smiles. “We were just so happy. I’ve been playing since I was seven years old, and I’ve always wanted to win provincials, and I share that with a few of my teammates.
“It was eight years in the making.”
Local teams made it deepest in girls’ divisions at the Ontario Lacrosse Festival, with the Nepean Knights recording Ottawa’s next-best result as semi-finalists in the U17 girls’ ‘A’ category, while Nepean also reached the semis in U11 ‘A’.
Nationals a special memory for long-time teammates
There wasn’t much time to bask in the victory for Biro, Chalmers and James however, since they were back on the floor to represent Team Ontario in their first game at nationals just four days later.
Biro and Chalmers had both traveled to Toronto over three weekends to attend the open tryouts for the provincial team. It was Chalmers’ second season with the Ontario squad, but the first in the company of her teammate.
“Last year when I played, I’d been the only Gloucester Griffin to make the team, but then this year, Mary and Leine were there, and that was really nice, being able experience that with them,” Chalmers indicates.
Biro says it was “really scary at first” to be a part of a new team, but knowing her coach and teammate would be there reassured her.
Chalmers and Biro have played lacrosse together countless times over the years, and they treasured the opportunity to do it once again after swapping their Griffins green for Ontario red.
“Chloe and I started playing lacrosse our first year together. She’s the first teammate that I remember having as a little girl,” Biro recounts. “Starting lacrosse, I didn’t know anybody, and over the years, Chloe and I have worked together to achieve this.”
Ontario split its four pool play matches at the nationals, and then lost its semi-final 11-4 to B.C. before claiming the bronze medal with a decisive 15-1 win over Saskatchewan.
“We ended up falling [in the semis], but we kind of regrouped,” Biro recalls. “We treated that bronze medal game as if it was the gold medal game with all of our intensity. That was just such a surreal moment.”
Lacrosse action aside, Chalmers says Ontario would have taken the cake in a team camaraderie competition. One of her favourite memories came when the coaches all left during a team meeting and told the players that when they came back, they had to have a musical number prepared for them.
“We went all out,” Chalmers highlights. “We were like, banging on the desks, clapping, snapping, then we started singing Party in the USA when they came back. It was this whole thing.”
While the junior lacrosse season finished with the national championships, coach James was just getting started. She’s now into her field lacrosse season with the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees club, and will soon be coaching the Haudenosaunee Nationals (previously known as the Iroquois Nationals) at the Box Lacrosse Women’s World Championships beginning Sept. 20 in Utica, NY.
“It’s a great opportunity for women in box to hit that next level,” James underlines. “For me, that was that next level that I really, really wanted to get to in my coaching career, both, you know, as a lacrosse coach, but also as a female in a very male-dominated sport.
“And then, even more importantly to me, coaching with the Haudenosaunee national team – I’m an Indigenous person as well, so being able to share the cultural component of the game and coaching with people that both have the tactical, systematic part of the game, but how much the game itself means to them, is really a nice thing to be able to share with them.”
Ottawa lacrosse players celebrate Canadian titles at 3 different levels
Chalmers and Biro weren’t alone in representing the national capital on Team Ontario, as Ottawa had double-digit representation at Lacrosse Canada’s national box lacrosse championships from the U13 level up.
Gloucester’s Colton Lamoureux scored two assists in Ontario’s 5-3 championship game victory over B.C. in the U13 event, while former Griffin Sam Pagan, who now represents Centre-Wellington, also averaged a point per game in Ontario’s six matches.
Nepean’s Jack Petruska earned gold as well at the U15 level with a 7-6 overtime win over B.C., while Nepean’s Oceane Houlahan (silver, U15 girls), Nepean’s Charlie Danks (bronze, U17 girls), Gloucester’s Bryceson Lamoureux and Brody Potenza (silver, U17) and Nepean’s Alyssa Perreault (bronze, U22 women) also hit the national podium.
Nepean Knights and Ottawa Capitals lacrosse product Connor Nock also celebrated a Canadian lacrosse title this summer, although his national junior ‘A’ championship win came about much differently than he would have initially pictured it.
His repeat Minto Cup crown came with the Canadian championships tournament-host Coquitlam Adanacs, who he joined midseason. Gloucester Griffins product Austin Lamoureux placed third with the Port Coquitlam Saints at the Minto Cup.
Nock, a 20-year-old defender, helped Coquitlam limit the Orangeville Northmen to six goals in the deciding game for the first time in 21 playoff contests, as the Adanacs overcame their preliminary round defeat to the Northmen to sweep the best-of-3 championship final.
There was extra satisfaction for Nock to beat Orangeville, which ignited a boardroom war that forced him from the Toronto Beaches, where he’d been playing alongside numerous Nepean Jr. ‘B’ and minor lacrosse products before several were ruled ineligible to play anywhere in Ontario this season due to a paperwork problem.
This was the second year in a row that Nock won the Minto Cup, after being called up to the Burlington Blaze for their championship run last season. Nock also plays NCAA field lacrosse at Quincy University in Illinois.