‘Wouldn’t want to win it with anyone else’

The Glenlawn Lions weren’t interested in hanging another ‘finalists’ banner.

And they won’t have to.

After two years of falling short at the finish line, the Lions pieced together a pair of dominant outings and swept the Vincent Massey Trojans in a best-of-three to capture their first Manitoba Women’s High School Hockey League Division 1 title on Thursday.

“It meant the world to us going in,” said Lions co-captain Vayda Rigaux, who earned playoff MVP honours. “We knew it was going to be hard, and we knew we can’t get ahead of ourselves, but before every game, we knew we’d been in this (position and) not every team gets a chance at three championships, and we knew we couldn’t let this one go.”

Eight players on Glenlawn had experienced heartbreak together while losing the last two championships, and with a number of them set to graduate this year, the group understood that this might be their best chance to win it all.

“We just wanted to do it for the seniors for the past two years who didn’t get to win it with us,” Vayda added. “We really wanted to do it this year as a last chance. We wanted to go make our last game as a Glenlawn Lion really something to remember and not end on a loss, and we were finally able to bring home the win.”

Vayda, a blue-liner, and her identical twin sister Delainey, a forward, were sensational for the Lions in the championship series, combining for seven goals and 15 points. The Grade 12 twins — who have been unavailable for some championship games in previous years owing to their commitments in AAA — have terrorized the MWHSHL’s top division for the last three seasons, and were at their collective best as the chips were pushed to the middle.

“They were the driving force for the whole playoffs,” said Lions co-head coach Brad Nechwediuk, who leads the team with Dean Rigaux. “If you were to look at our scores when they didn’t play, we were not nearly as competitive. And, two years ago, they were only in Grade 10 when we lost. So yeah, they’ve come a long way from two years ago, for sure.”

In the last two seasons, the Lions have only lost once when the twins were in the lineup.

“I think there’s a sense of confidence that we get when we get on the ice with high school hockey,” Vayda said. “It’s like a sense that you want to try something new, and we always look for each other, which can produce quite a bit. And we had this series in particular, we actually had a couple of other scores, which is really nice. So not only did we score some goals, we got to help other teammates score some goals, which is really great to see.”

The Lions triumphed in Game 1, 6-2, thanks to a pair of goals from both of the Rigauxs, one from Trinity Benci and another from Neve Halpenny. In Game 2, Glenlawn shut the door on Vincent Massey’s hopes of evening the series in a 5-1 championship-sealing victory, with a pair of goals from Delainey and one from Vayda, Benci and Ava Price, respectively.

“I just wanted to win it with the girls this year, because ’Lainey and Vayda deserve it so much, and they have tried so hard,” said Benci, who had four points in the series and plays alongside her sister Ariel. “This year, our team really deserved it because of what’s happened in the past, and so this is where I can be happy, because we’re losing a lot of players next year, unfortunately.

“It makes me really happy, because I wouldn’t want to win it with anyone else.”

Lions netminder Anya Perchaluk was strong in both contests, stopping 58 of the 61 shots she faced.

“We had excellent goaltending throughout the playoffs,” said Nechwediuk, “and the players that don’t play a role as much in scoring were excellent (on Thursday). We really limited their opportunities in both games… and they’re a high-scoring team, and our supporting cast around our goal scorers brought it up to another notch (Thursday) and really shut down their top players, giving them no room for the majority of the game or the series for that matter.”

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