Team Ontario male earns silver at National Aboriginal Hockey Championships

Team Ontario male started the National Aboriginal Hockey Championship with three straight losses. The team was discouraged and disappointed. But their coaches knew that they were a talented group of players – they just needed to put it all together.
In the playoff round, that is exactly what happened. Team Ontario first played Quebec’s Eastern Door and the North in the qualifying game, the same team that had beaten them in game two of the round robin. But this time the result was different, as Ontario got its first win of the tournament with a big upset.
But Team Ontario’s biggest upset was yet to come. In the semifinals the team took on perennial powerhouse Alberta, the top seeded team, a monumental task. Ontario got off to an early lead, only to watch Alberta storm back and tie the game to send it to overtime.
Overtime solved nothing, but in the shootout Lac Seul’s Jonathon Carpenter scored to send Ontario to the gold medal game.
Although the male team lost in the gold medal game 5-3 to Team British Columbia, the silver medal was a great finish for the team made up of First Nations, Metis and Inuit players from across northern and southern Ontario.
“We thought the boys weren’t going to make the medal round,” said Marc Laliberte, chair of the Aboriginal Sports and Wellness Council of Ontario (AWSCO). “But by the fourth game, when they started playing together and started buying into the system, they performed very well and shocked everybody.”
On the female side, Team Ontario had a successful week but ended up losing to Quebec’s Eastern Door and the North by one goal in the bronze medal game.
Laliberte said the team was disappointed with the finish out of the medals, since it was a very talented group of players with high expectations. He said the coaches and supporters were proud of the way the girls played all week.
“We knew the girls were good, and it was nice to see them make it to the medal round,” Laliberte said.
He noted that Roberta Mamakwa of Wunnumin Lake was one of the best players at the tournament, and that she impressed the entire staff with her leadership on and off the ice.
On the male side, Laliberte highlighted the play of Daniel McKittrik of Coral Harbour, Nunavut, who played forward for Team Ontario and earned a spot on the tournament’s all-star team. He noted the play of Fort William First Nation’s Dalton Demerah, Team Ontario’s goalie.
He also pointed out how well behaved the Ontario teams were, once again.
“We have the best behaved athletes, and we’re very proud of that,” Laliberte said.
In the end however, Laliberte said the results prove once again that more support is needed for Ontario’s Aboriginal athletes.
British Columbia, the gold-medal winning team, receives $2 million per year from the provincial government to build its Aboriginal hockey program, over ten times what the Ontario teams receive, Laliberte said.
“It really shows what additional funding can do,” he said. “We need the chiefs to go to bat for us.”
In the meantime the ASWCO continues to recruit volunteer coaches and managers for the 2014 tournament, which will once again be held in Kahanawake.
Laliberte said the organization wants to return to having a north and south Ontario team at next year’s tournament. That decision will be made over the coming months.