The Lynx won basketball’s ‘trifecta’ in 2016
Jean Vanier defended Ontario title after capturing Standard, Tribune tournaments
In 2016, great things came in threes for the senior girls basketball team at l’école secondaire catholique Jean Vanier, and not just from draining shots from long range on the court.
The Lynx, who on Sunday will be inducted to the Welland Sports Wall of Fame, also won “the trifecta” when it came to competing at tournaments that season. After becoming the first single-A school to capture championships at the Standard Tournament in St. Catharines, with a 46-28 victory over the Eden Flyers, and the Tribune Tournament in Welland, a 41-39 nail-biter versus the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, they defended their Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA) title.
“This team that’s being put on the wall of fame had an incredible season,” said assistant coach Tricia Poulin. “We beat Notre Dame for the Tribune Tournament championship by two points. I remember it came down to free throws.”
Isabelle Sinclair, a Grade 9 student, knocked down two free throws to clinch the win over Notre Dame, a triple-A school and the defending Tribune Tournament gold medallists.
“That was a huge game,” Poulin said.
Another huge game — and the one that put an exclamation mark on the special season — was a 51-45 come-from-behind victory over the No. 3 seed O’Gorman Knights in the gold-medal game at the OFSAA championship in Timmins.
Top-seeded Vanier took the title despite trailing 17-2 after two quarters of play. Poulin couldn’t recall everything that was said in the halftime pep talk at Timmins.
“I could remember the energy and where that pep talk was heading and what we relied on,” she said. “We reminded the girls of everything they had accomplished up until that point and that we still had a lot of game left to play and a lot to show for ourselves.”
Vanier got back into the game by “chipping away.”
“What they did really well, and probably because they were seasoned athletes, was they trusted the system and they trusted the plan. They didn’t panic, they knew,” Poulin said. “It was a well-oiled machine, I would say, this 2016 team.”
At the controls of that machine was head coach Tara Poulin.
“Tara could quickly change the defence from a zone to a man if we needed to, from a half-court trap to a man quickly. She could call anything and it would come to fruition,” Tricia Poulin said of her sister.
Communications also was a strength for Vanier at provincials that year.
“They just kind of yinged and yanged really well. They chipped away, got that gold and walked away with a huge win,” Tricia Poulin said. “You don’t see too many teams — especially high school students — that could be down by that much when they had such a winning season and still find the grit and resilience after halftime to come back with an OFSAA gold.”
Unlike the Standard and Tribune tournaments, the Lynx were not the underdogs at provincials.
“We had just won the year before, so the pressure was on us to perform,” Tricia Poulin said. “We were the No. 1 seed.”
The Lynx were used to being the underdogs at tournaments featuring teams from double-A and triple-A schools
“We kind of thrived in that underestimated zone. We loved when we were seeded low and we had to kind of say, ‘Hey, wait a second, we’re being underestimated,’ ” Tricia Poulin recalls.
The gold medal was Vanier’s fourth at the provincials in six years, and its fourth at the OFSAA championship against the host team. Before winning it all in Timmins in 2016, against E.J. Lejeunesse in Windsor the year before, the Lynx dashed the hopes of the home team in St. Catharines in 2011 and at Pain Court, Ont., in 2012.
Thanks to their head coach spending all her time at provincials scouting opponents, the Lynx were able to receive breakdowns at their pregame meetings.
“These girls going into this game knew who was left-handed, who was right-handed. Tara would have their offence memorized, their defence memorized,” Tricia Poulin said.
She remembered the team practising in the lobby of their hotel using game tape.
“She (Tara) already had written down what minutes she wanted me to pause the tape at and slow it down for the girls,” her sister recalled. “She had that all planned out before we played that game, and before we played the quarterfinal and the semifinal. When we went to these tournaments — especially, these provincial championships — it’s not a fluke that Tara got to wear OFSAA gold as a coach four times.”
What was so special about the 2016 team?
“We had a lot of them come back from the 2015 team, but they were just extremely athletic,” said Tricia Poulin. “A few of them were very good basketball players, we had some soccer players and volleyball players.
“They were just extremely athletic and they had just a knock-down defence because of the athleticism. They just kind of had that grit.”
The Lynx are among three teams going on the wall in a ceremony Sunday at Seaway Mall. The Welland Atlas Steels in tyke baseball and Club Richelieu in midget baseball are also being honoured for winning Ontario championships in 1973 and 1977, respectively.
Four athletes — Lauren Aiello, in rowing; Dan Girardi and Steve Latinovich, in hockey; and Corey Lee, in martial arts — are being inducted, as well, as are three other individuals — Jack Ballantyne, in minor hockey, posthumously; Mike Rao, in high school and university basketball; and Ray Sarkis, in college sports.