Every November the weather gets a lot colder, classes get tougher and U of T’s women’s lacrosse team makes a trip to the OUA championships. This year is no different for the two-time defending champions, the Varsity Blues.
After squeaking out a 6-5 victory against McMaster in the quarterfinals last Saturday, the women earned a ticket to the final four of the OUA championships being held at Wilfrid Laurier this weekend.
Since lacrosse was recognized as an official OUA women’s sport in 1998, U of T’s team has had remarkable success on the field. In their first three appearances in the championships, the Blues took home a bronze, a silver, and a bronze. Then in 2001, the Blues broke through and won their elusive first championship, only to follow it up with a perfect season in 2002. They beat out Western in the final on home turf.
After losing some key players to graduation, including last year’s captain and OUA all-star Beth Pilkington, this year’s squad scratched and crawled to a 4-4-2 regular season record.
“We had some really phenomenal people graduate so under the circumstances we had a pretty good season,” explains head coach Todd Pepper. “We easily could have had a better record. We had a lot of close losses and those [two] ties.”
But despite coming down to earth this season, coach Todd Pepper knows it all boils down to this weekend. “As long as you make the playoffs, it’s all that matters. We just have to be prepared and make sure we play well on Saturday.”
In the first semi-final match-up U of T will be up against the yet-undefeated Laurier Golden Hawks. Not only will the Blues have to deal with a pro-Laurier crowd, they’ll also be trying to hand Laurier their first loss of the season. Much like U of T last year, Laurier sprinted through the regular season, outscoring their opponents 132-44, including a 12-5 win against U of T.
Though U of T lost the regular season game against Laurier, don’t expect the same results on Saturday says Pepper. “When we played [Laurier] in the regular season, we were playing our second game of the day and they were playing their first. We were tied at the half and then they ran us off the field,” the head coach argued.
That day the Blues were also missing some key players. Absent were June Shiraishi, Deborah Erwin, and Deanna Merkley who were training with the Canadian National squad.
The Blues are scheduled to play at noon on Saturday at Laurier Stadium. The other semi-final has former two-time champions Queen’s facing Brock. The semi-final winners will meet in the gold medal game on Sunday at 2pm, while the bronze medal game will be played Sunday at noon.
In men’s lacrosse action this past weekend, the Blues ended their season with a 16-9 loss against Guelph in quarterfinal action.
