ORILLIA – McKinnon Park Secondary School in Caledonia fell just shy of winning Gold at the OFSSA Trillium Cup Girls Field Lacrosse Finals held in Orillia last week.
MPSS opened the tournament with a 14-4 win over Birtchmount High, and then steamrolled over St Peters, 10-2, and Patrick Fogarty Secondary, 17-7, earning them a berth in the semi-finals.
Another win, 11-7, and they were facing Holy Cross for the Gold. Holy Cross come out running and gunning and led 9-2 at the half. MPSS made a few adjustments at halftime after noticing Holy Cross was anticipating MPSS’s long passes, which had worked well for them up until that point.
Coach Neely Chase had the girls shorten up their passes and check their opponents man-on-man more closely.
The move worked well as Holy Cross big shooters were virtually shut down. Meanwhile, the MPSS attackers concentrated on ball control in the second half.
Caledonia began chipping away at the Holy Cross lead, drawing within one, but ran out of time with Holy Cross clinging to a 9-8, one goal lead.
It was the second year in a row MPSS took home Silver, narrowly missing out of the Gold.
MPSS will be losing some of their senior girls over the summer as they graduate and continue on to college and University, so Coach Chase will have to rebuild next season. However, there is always a lot of talent to choose from with both Caledonia and Six Nations high school students.
“I could not be more proud of the girls this season and they should be very proud of themselves,” says Coach Neely Chase. “They displayed talent, teamwork, determination and sportsmanship in every tournament. It was an honour to coach such a quality lacrosse team.”
No fewer than 12 of the MPSS team are members of the Six Nations U-19’s while five are members of both Six Nations U-19 and the Haudenosaunee World Team.
