STINKY shirts were a small price to pay for the Handsworth senior girls field hockey team as they won the school's first-ever AAA provincial championship with a 3-1 victory over Carson Graham in an all-North Shore final Friday in Kelowna.
A tournament win earlier in the season in which they wore their white jerseys for every game convinced the Royals that a whiteout was again necessary. Washing the jerseys, of course, was out of the question as well.
At the provincial tournament - a daunting run of six games in three days - the Royals managed to wear white for five of their six contests, leading up to the sweet smell of victory in the tournament final against last year's champions from Carson.
"The parents driving the players complained a little bit . . . about the smell in the car going back to the hotel," said head coach Paul Winstanley with a laugh, adding that it was all worth it for a year of sensational hockey capped off by a historic victory for the school.
Handsworth finished the year with 24 wins, four ties and no losses while scoring 92 goals and giving up just 16 in 28 games. The numbers got even more impressive at provincials as they scored 23 while conceding only one - a late-game tally from Carson with the game in hand.
"We defended well, our midfield dominated and we had the best forwards," said Winstanley. "Definitely in the province we had the best forwards and the best midfield - it was just a complete team."
Hannah Haughn, Kendra Perrin and Kylie Nabata - Handsworth's talented trio of Grade 12 captains - each scored in the final. Those three along with dominant sweeper Amanda Watson were the team's only Grade 12 players and they pushed the Royals to greater and greater heights all year, said Winstanley.
The Royals cruised through the opening games of the provincial championships, holding each team scoreless in pool play, a quarterfinal win over Gleneagle and semifinal win over Oak Bay. The final, a rematch of this year's North Shore championship game which Handsworth won 4-2, started out very evenly with Carson generating chances early. Haughn, Handsworth's super striker who recently returned from a trip to the Pan Am Games with the Canadian national team, scored the only goal of a tight first half.
"There's such great leadership with the Grade 12s," said Winstanley. "At halftime actually we were up 1-0 and I could
see the captains were totally into it, they came off talking about the first half. I actually said very little at halftime, I just asked the captains for their input and they talked about adjustments we needed to make for the second half. They're really students of the game now and they just went out and did what we talked about at halftime."
The Royals killed all of Carson's momentum with two more goals in the second before holding off the Eagles in the game's final moments to claim the banner. At the final whistle the Handsworth players mobbed their goalie in a teary-eyed mosh pit.
"As we were going through the handshakes most of the team was crying with the sort of surreal excitement of winning finally," said Winstanley. "I said to our manager, Julie (Bauman), 'You just can't please these kids because they're either crying when you lose or crying when you win.' It was kind of cute the way they were so overtaken with emotion."
The Royals were loaded with top-end talented as well as deep with reinforcements, said Winstanley, adding that every player on the 18-person roster played in every game at the tournament. That depth left the team's stars relatively fresh for the final despite it being their sixth game in three days.
"Everyone carried the load," said Winstanley. "We never sagged when we replaced players from our starting lineup, we just kept playing the same type of hockey. It was a very, very good squad."
Carson, as always, battled all the way through and made things tough on the Royals, said Winstanley.
"(Carson) played very well - lots of energy and hard work, lots of desire," he said. "They're a good team and they'll be as good next year. We're hoping it will be a Handsworth/Carson final (again) next year."
West Van will be in that mix too. The Highlanders finished fifth at the tournament after a heartbreaking 1-0 quarterfinal loss to Oak Bay in which West Van had all the shots and all the chances but couldn't score.
Handsworth's win made it four North Shore champions in the past five years with West Van claiming the title in 2007 and 2008 and Carson winning last year's crown. When Winstanley took over the team in 2003 the Royals had only been to one provincial championship in their long history. They've made the tournament in each of his nine seasons but had only cracked the top four once before last weekend's breakthrough.
Smelly white jerseys may have given the girls something to rally around, said Winstanley, but when these Royals took the field, laundry really had nothing to do with it.
"The team just kept getting better week by week."
