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CIS 50th Anniversary Success Stories (Week 4): Jacquie Lavallee
As part of its 50th Anniversary Celebration, Canadian Interuniversity Sport presents the CIS 50th Anniversary Success Stories series. Each Thursday throughout the 2011-12 season, we will profile two alumni from CIS member institutions who have made outstanding contributions in areas such as sports, business, politics or in the community.
From success on the field to helping others succeed in the classroom
Former two-sport CIS All-Canadian Jacquie Lavallee now helping Saskatchewan youth
By Bob Florence
SASKATOON - Brian, a father with three children, graduated from Grade 12 last June.
High school took him longer than the usual four years, what with raising his kids and helping to look after his sisters and holding a job. By putting family first means he sometimes had to shelve school, but he stuck with it, kept coming back for more.
Jacquie Lavallee taught Brian math and phys ed. As he pushed himself through school, she helped him along.
“Seeing these students, knowing what they go through, i feel a strong emotion,” she said. “They have such a huge sense of accomplishment.”
He finished school in June. She cheered.
Their school is in the middle of Saskatoon in the Broadway district, on a business street that goes back a century but has the look and feel of a happening place. Broadway is where you’ll find a fresh cheese market and a family bakery, a restored theatre, a running store and more.
The school on Broadway is called Oskayak. It’s a high school for aboriginal students. For Lavallee it’s home.
Some thought she was a good fit to be a teacher at Holy Cross, returning to the high school where she was a student in Saskatoon in the 1990s. Lavallee, who is Metis, picked Oskayak.
“That idea was born the first time I set foot in the school (after university),” she said. “I went to a pow wow they were having. ‘I want to teach here,’ I said. ‘This is where I belong.’”
And now?
“I never think of it as a job,” she said.
A prime-time player as she works in education, she was an award-winning athlete at the University of Saskatchewan.
Lavallee played both soccer and basketball with the Saskatchewan Huskies. On fall evenings she’d go from one practice to another, from soccer field to basketball court. She did it for five seasons.
She was named an All-Canadian in both sports, selected by university coaches as one of the best midfielders in Canada in soccer and among the top guards in basketball. She is eighth in career scoring in Huskies basketball and fourth all-time in scoring in Huskies soccer. Known in soccer for her explosive kick, in basketball her game was flash and dash.
Lavallee played a pair of exhibition games on the Canadian national soccer team. She went further in basketball. She was captain of the Canadian basketball team that upset the United States in the 2001 FISU Games in Beijing. She played pro in Germany.
And on she goes.
She was head coach of Canada’s national basketball team at the first world under-17 girls championship in 2010. She has been an assistant coach of the Huskies for years. Together with Ali Fairbrother, who is another assistant, and head coach Lisa Thomaidis, they’ve developed Saskatchewan into one of the hot basketball programs in Canada. Last season the Huskies made it to the national final in Windsor, finishing second. That’s the best result ever on a Huskies team that started in 1917.
Lavallee also launched Team Spirit, a basketball program for aboriginal teen girls.
“To see them hit their first basket — when they run down the court they look at you with a smile on their face — that’s the reward,” she said.
Inspired by a workshop given in Moose Jaw by Father Joe Pereira, a Catholic priest from India who travels the world to talk yoga, she introduces Yoga for Youth at schools in Saskatoon.
“It’s for those who’ve experienced the justice system, addiction, foster care, bringing them access to an opportunity that they don’t have,” she said.
“There is a girl who went with me to yoga once a week for a year. A year. That’s how long it took her to get the confidence to go on her own. To see these accomplishments, to have them succeed at something . . . “
That means everything.
Lavallee showed her stuff as an athlete. Now, a decade later, you see her character.
“What I have,” she said, “is gratitude for all the people who have touched me in some way. They gave me support, purpose.
I recognize the opportunities I’ve been given.
“I want others to get the same chance.”
