Local lacrosse pioneer Fred Doig remembered
Nobody in lacrosse possessed a submarine shot as devastating as Fred Doig’s torpedoes.
Those down-low rubber-ball dandies were heavy and hard enough to leave welts on the arms and body of any goalie foolish enough to stand in the way and that was Ray Masson’s job in the years he faced Doig while playing for the Labatt’s Blues.
“The image is burned in my brain, I had nightmares about it for years,” said Masson.
“Fred would play the top of the odd-man (formation) and they’d work the ball around looking for an opening and if one didn’t come up they’d just throw the ball back to Fred. He would wind up for the submarine and it would be like the Red Sea; everybody would just part.
“He would let loose and it was a vertical drop on the stick and a release about ankle height and if you got hit it was by pure luck, and it would hurt for the rest of the game. It’s an image I’ll never get out of my head. When that stick came up, it was just, oh my God. He’d release the ball and it would disappear and you’d see it rolling between your feet after it came out of the net. It was like the ball weighed 10 times as much as it did with anybody else’s shot. Nobody had a shot like he did.”
Doig died June 11 at Rotary Hospice House. He was 91.
A celebration of Doig’s life is planned for Saturday at 1 p.m. at the Hart Community Centre.
As a player, coach and referee and in his later years as a fan, he was one of the greatest ambassadors for lacrosse the game has ever known. He played at least one game in eight decades and took it to the highest level in 12 seasons with the Victoria Shamrocks, helping them win Mann Cup senior A national titles in 1955 and 1956.
He wasn’t dirty, didn’t go looking for fights, and he never moved those skinny white legs beyond a steady jog. But he was smart and used his size and skill to rise above the rest as a pinpoint passer and perennial scoring champion of the Prince George Lacrosse Association.
As a defender, Doig was an intimidating force who used his six-foot-four, 230-pound bulk to punish opponents who dared venture into his territory. The followthrough motion of his stick as Doig unleashed the ball was vicious and players and their unprotected faces paid a painful price if they stood too close.
“I can remember trying to chase him down on the old lacrosse floor, especially at the Coliseum, and once he got that ball you just about couldn’t get it away from him, you had to double-team him,” said Glen ‘Moose” Scott, who used to play for the Labatt’s Blues.
“He could bob and weave and stop and start and do the stickwork so you got so frustrated you ended up taking another penalty. He was the most frustrating player to play against because he was that good.
“Even after he left the game, he had such a love for Canada’s national summer sport he continued coaching and mentoring younger kids and helping where he could. His vast knowledge and dedication to the sport was just unreal. Lacrosse has lost a good friend.”
Scott, the Prince George Senior Lacrosse Association commissioner, convinced the B.C. Lacrosse Association to name the provincial senior C championship trophy after Doig. That trophy, now called the Fred Doig Memorial Cup, will be presented to the B.C. champions when Prince George hosts the tournament July 28-30 at Kin 1.
Doig started the game from scratch as the city’s sole lacrosse pioneer not long after he moved up from Victoria in 1966. He convinced local teens to take up the sport and drew players from out of town on his recruiting trips. He was considered the old man of the game but provided the leadership needed to turn that group of teens into provincial senior champions.
“Fred used that expression that he felt guys would run through brick walls for him and that was true,” said Ken McIntosh, who joined Doig on the expansion Macs in 1969, along with his twin brother Neil.
“We were playing Vernon and maybe we didn’t like the Stylers but I can assure you we didn’t like Vernon. Their star player, David Ogasawara, was a very talented player and a big guy and either the newspaper or radio station phoned up Fred and he said: ‘Oh I’m sure he does well, but Ken McIntosh is checking him and I don’t think he’s going to want to play after this weekend.’”
Doig was a master at using the media to stir the pot and fuel rivalries to create fan interest in the game. Lacrosse playoff crowds at the Coliseum were bigger than hockey crowds for the senior Mohawks. The P.T. Barnum of lacrosse once hinted in a Citizen story that Jack Bionda, the biggest name in lacrosse and former teammate of Doig’s in Victoria, was coming to play for the Macs. The game was nearly sold out but Bionda never showed up.
“That was Freddie, he knew how to promote the game,” said Tony Ciolfitto.
His first three years in Prince George, Doig was player/coach of the Molson’s Old Stylers. He switched to the expansion Columbus Hotel Macs as their 39-year-old player/coach in 1969. The following year, after winning their league, a few days before the Macs were to host the Armstrong Shamrocks that weekend in a best-of-three provincial semifinal, Doig came out with a bold statement.
“It’s in the bag,” he told Citizen sports editor Doug Martin. “I don’t figure people will have to buy any tickets for Sunday. We’ll take these guys two straight.”
The year before that, the Macs lost the first game of the best-ofthree league final to the Inn of the North and Doig was unfazed.
“There’s no way those guys can beat us,” he said. “It’s as good as over. We’ll beat them in the second game and then win the third game. It’s already decided.”
That’s exactly how it turned out. Nowadays, no coach would dare give an opposing team any incentive to make them feel they aren’t a threat. For Doig, it was a recurring theme.
No matter what the score at the end of period, his intermission speech would always include this nugget: “It’s a can of corn.” It was Doig’s way of saying, “we’ve got this,” and his teammates believed him.