As October ends, so does another season of field hockey at Chateauguay Valley Regional High School (CVR). Across the junior and senior levels, six teams from CVR competed this year – an impressive feat for a sport where most schools are struggling to find players for one team. This year’s coaches were Terri Marino, Lisa Evans, Jodi Wallace, Jennifer Neal, Faye Craig, Christina Caza, Taylor Faille, Erika Hamilton, Cynthia Gallinger, Karlee Cluff, and Sayard Chartrand.
The junior girls played their final tournament on October 11. The weather did not cooperate, and the three teams spent the day competing in cold and windy conditions. Three teams from CVR took part in this final tournament, with one team taking home the bronze.
The senior girls had three teams competing this season. Usually, coaches will assemble one team with the strongest chance of winning, and then two equally dispersed teams. However, this year enough grade 11 students signed up so that the coaches were able to make one team out of the graduating class and two teams of students from grades 9 and 10.
The final senior girls tournament took place on October 25. The weather was cooperative, the teams performed extremely well, and all three of them ended up in the final rounds. Team Two played Heritage Regional High School for third place and lost, taking fourth place. Teams One and Three faced off in the championship game: for the second year in a row it was a CVR versus CVR championship. Team One (the grade 11 team) took the gold, while Team Three came in second.
For many of the grade 11 players this was the last time they will have the chance to play this sport, and Coach Marino says the win was highly emotional for a lot of the girls. One of the goalies, Ava Jeuris, says, “After playing with all these girls since grade seven, it was surreal to win all together for the last time,” and she adds that she was “so proud of every single one of my teammates for hustling up and down the field every game, never letting anything discourage them.” She gives a huge shoutout to the coaches for encouraging them to never give up.
An exciting aspect of the day was that a junior goalie was moved up to play in the final tournament since the senior girls only had two goalies (Ava Jeuris and Naomie Racine) between the three teams. The coaches knew there was a strong chance CVR could have all three teams playing at the same time, so they moved junior Aubrey Wallace up to the senior level to save the day.
The CVR season wrapped up as it always does, with a friendly game of field hockey between the football team and the field hockey team. The game took place on October 26, and though a good game was played by all, it was the field hockey team that ended up winning 2-0. Well done, Lady Spartans!
