Winning It All by Fred Bauer A way back in the summer and autumn of 1970, Hugh Thomas, Paul Flaherty, Austin Brown and Pete Williams talked about putting a team of Lambeth boys together aged 12 and 13 with hopes of “winning it all”. In the early spring of 1971, those boys and their coaches finished up a memorable year and won the first Provincial Championship for Lambeth Minor Hockey. I was not there but I’m sure the entire town celebrated that historic first Championship. The last 50 years have seen about 1,500 teams come together in September at the Lambeth arena and hope to “win it all” and celebrate a provincial championship together with each other, their family, friends and the community and yet only 36 teams had accomplished that feat before this past season. Thirty boys teams and six girls teams know what that feeling is like “to win it all” and in the summer of 2024, Head Coach and Manager, Paul and Kate Bray and assistant coaches Chris Bailey, Frank Boyes, Dan Spicer and Val Bolger thought they just might have enough skill and talent to have success at the “A” level. They did well the past few years and under the watchful and dedicated eye of their coaches, the girls got good at hockey and they were ready to move up to a classification normally reserved for bigger centres jumping from B, skipping BB and moving right to “A”. However, they were not fooling anybody, winning or competing for a Provincial Championship would be no easy feat. These Championships are won in a year-end tournament where anything can happen, you first have to qualify and then you have to win 5 to 6 games in a row without any missteps which we all know are a part of sport.
They started the season off against the Soo Jr. Greyhounds with a resounding 6-0 win and won their first nine games by a combined score of 35-0. They came out of the gates ranked #1 in Ontario and remained in the top three throughout the season right until the OWHA Provincial Championships in Erin Mills in mid-April. The Lambeth Lancer U11A team did not sneak up on anybody. They did not have the luxury of being the hunter or the underdog, they were the hunted throughout the season that saw them finish with a 52-13-10 record. For the sake of a good story, I wish there was an overtime goal heroine or a miracle save by one of the two goaltenders but it was a Championship won by alternating both goalies without fail, 5 D rolling out on regular shifts and three lines, equally balanced and rolled out one right after the other until these 9 and 10 year old girls had a 3 – 0, 4 – 0, 7 – 0, 5 – 1 and a 5 – 2 win in the Championship Final game bringing home Lambeth’s 37th Provincial Championship Many of the details of this season will be lost to these girl’s memories but this article or a picture might be pointed to one day by a little boy or girl and Mom or Gramma will be asked, “You played hockey?” She will say, “I did and we were quite good, I loved those girls.” Thank you girls for the winter of 24/25.
Front Row: Charlotte McIntosh, Briarley Davies. Second Row: Avery Galbraith, Alexandra Boyes, Etta Spicer, Natalie Smith. Third Row: Taylor DaCosta, Claire Jefferson, Isla Browne, Grace Bray, Bianca Bailey, Bronwyn Ruddock, Nora Bolger, Olivia Les, Reid Spicer, Eliana Les, Val Bolger (Assistant). Back Row: Paul Bray (Coach), Chris Bailey (Assistant), Frank Boyes (Assistant), Dan Spicer (Assistant).
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Lambeth Villager • June 2025 • Page 9
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