Assistant trainer breaking a gender barrier
Natasha (Tash) Lagace first woman to work on bench and travel regularly with Petes
Natasha (Tash) Lagace is breaking a gender barrier with the Peterborough Petes and hopes to break more.
As the team’s new assistant athletic trainer, Lagace is the first woman to work on the Petes bench and travel regularly on the team bus. She joined the Petes this fall coming off her second summer as an athletic therapist for the Peterborough Century 21 Lakers.
While female trainers and therapists are not new to men’s junior and pro sports ranks, they’re not yet common.
“It’s kind of exciting,” Lagace said. “There is one other female that I know of in the OHL. You don’t really see many female therapists in pro sports on the bench. You’ll see them associated with the team but it’s strictly as a massage therapist or physiotherapist in the room but never on the bench.
“I’d like to break into the NHL and be the first female therapist in the NHL.”
A native of Milton, Lagace was working in Toronto when her boyfriend, and now husband, T.J. Jarvis, a medical sales rep, was transferred to Peterborough two years ago. Lagace was hired by Josh Martin at Return to Function which is located within Hybrid Fitness run by Josh Gillam who is the Petes’ strength and conditioning coach.
Martin has worked with the Lakers for years and Lagace joined him. It was her introduction to the local sports community and lacrosse.
“Working with the Lakers opened me up to a whole other level of sport. I realized how passionate Peterborough is about their teams,” Lagace said. “Very passionate about lacrosse and hockey. Being a part of that whole community was unreal.”
She travelled to British Columbia on the Lakers journey to a Mann Cup last year.
“I got to experience my first real championship with a team and long road trip away from home,” she said. “It was an amazing experience.”
When Gillam heard the Petes were looking to add a therapist to assist head trainer Brian Miller he recommended Lagace.
She says the players and coaches have made her feel comfortable.
“They’ve been really good,” she said. “I don’t feel uncomfortable one bit.”
It was a novelty at first for the players.
“A couple of them said it was different seeing a female on the bench or on the road trips,” she said, “but they see me all the time at Hybrid, too, because they work out there three times a week and that’s where I work in a clinic. They’ve got pretty used to seeing me around.”
The Petes medical room is across the hall from the dressing room so few accommodations had to be made for Lagace who does not go in the dressing room. There are some set-ups on the road where the medical room is located within the dressing room.
“We have to work around that by either moving it back out of the room or make sure everyone is fully dressed before I’m able to go in,” she said.
With the Lakers she is working with men while the Petes are mostly teenagers. Lagace says the dynamics aren’t much different.
“Boys will be boys,” she said, with a chuckle. “Whether they’re grown men with families or teens being teens they’re all the same. They treat me really well. Being a woman in this field is hard enough as it is but the guys have all been great on both teams. The only real difference is there is more demand here because with the Lakers we only do games.”
Her Petes role is part-time. She attends practices two to four days a week and all games. She continues to work at Return to Function.
Lagace holds a specialized honours kinesiology and health science degree and athletic therapy certificate from York University. She is a certified athletic therapist and registered massage therapist. She has also worked with the Toronto Argonauts, National Ballet of Canada and numerous varsity teams including York and the Trent Excalibur.
Larry Smith is a long-time assistant on game nights for Miller on the non-medical side of the job. Miller said he welcomed Lagace’s assistance.
“For years in junior hockey the trainer was a one-man system day-in and day-out with some volunteers on game days,” Miller said.
“The demands keep rising with the nature of the game. It was tough to balance all the demands of doing both medical and equipment.
“Ultimately, it’s about taking care of the players so the more staff we have to take care of the players the better their care is,” Miller said. “It’s been really handy because there have been times where more than one medical person has been needed at a time.”
Miller said Lagace has some training he doesn’t.
“She’s also a registered massage therapist and she’s taken some therapy courses I haven’t,” he said. “Things are always changing and she’s a lot more recently out of school than I am. It’s good. We’ve been able to learn from each other.”