Championships memorable for local athletes
Courtesy Team Eastern Door and the North
The 2025 National Aboriginal Hockey Championships (NAHC) in Kamloops, British Columbia, are in the books and both Team Eastern Door and the North (EDN) rosters have returned home, including the seven players from Kahnawake who were selected to play on the teams.
Kahnawa’kehró:non Waheshon Curotte, who played on the girls’ team for EDN for the first time this year, said the tournament and the trip to Kamloops were positive.
“It was a great experience, meeting new people and playing in such a big tournament. I would like to play for Team EDN next year,” said Curotte.
“It wasn’t the outcome we hoped for, but the experience, the memories, and the friends I made was what made it great.”
Indeed, the girls’ EDN team had a difficult tournament results-wise, going winless due in part to a large number of injuries that forced them to forfeit their last game of the tournament due to a lack of healthy players.
“We’re only allowed to bring 18 skaters and two goalies, so I found that having less players made it more difficult to try to get our team going and try to continue to push through,” said assistant coach Kwaronienhawi Jacobs.
Even still, she credited the team for giving it their all and keeping a good attitude throughout the tournament in the face of that adversity - so much so that they were recognized as the girls’ team that demonstrated the best sportsmanship of the tournament.
“The girls were working really, really hard. They tried their best. They had a great attitude, and we couldn’t have asked for anything any better apart from fewer injuries,” said Jacobs.
“I think they really got to learn and grow from the experiences that they’ve had. It was really nice to see them start so new, because we had a really new team compared to everybody else, and to see them experience their first games to the end and just how much they’ve grown in just one week, it was wild.”
As such, Jacobs feels that this experience will be beneficial for the players and for future incarnations of Team EDN with these players.
Camaraderie and sportsmanship took centre stage at the National Aboriginal Hockey Championships for Team Eastern Door and the North. Both teams visited the site of the Kamloops Residential school while out west for the tournament. Courtesy Team Eastern Door and the North
“Half of our players were second-year players, and the other half were all brand new. It was a very young team and a very new team, too, and the experience is eye-opening,” said Jacobs.
“We had a lot of one-on-one meetings with the girls to see what they felt they did well and what they could do better. And they were well aware of what needed to be worked on. I don’t think it’s something they are capable of, I think it was more just experience and realizing what they’re capable of and how good they can be.”
The boys’ EDN team also showed resilience throughout the tournament, even as they too did not have the results they were hoping for as they lost their first four games - especially since they started many of those games with early leads.
In a previous interview with The Eastern Door, Kahnawa’kehró:non assistant coach Mike Stacey said the boys’ team was working hard and doing their best.
That hard work finally paid off the final two games of the tournament, both against Team British Columbia. In the last round-robin game, they tied 6-6, and they beat them on May 9 3-1 to take fifth place in the tournament with a 1-1-4 record.
While in Kamloops for the tournament, both teams visited the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, where the remains of 215 children were detected in 2021, a discovery that sparked outrage and grief.
The teams got a guided tour of the grounds from a survivor of the school.
“We all individually wanted to see and experience it,” said Jacobs.
“It was very eye-opening. You felt it right away, as soon as you walked in there, the pain and the suffering and the hurt that went on in there. Our guide was one of the survivors. You could hear it in her voice, and you could hear what she was saying, and you could see how accurate the stories were, seeing firsthand where the kids were in there. It was heartbreaking.”
Jacobs found their guide was very strong for being able to give tours of the school, doing so for many years.
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“She’s been doing it since 1996, 1997, these tours. You can still hear it in her voice, and that’s how strong she is, she’s been able to come to talk about it and show people what was done, and able to educate everybody on that,” said Jacobs.
Curotte appreciated the tour.
“It was a good experience, and emotional as well, visiting the residential school. I’ve only read about them, but to be there was an experience,” she said.
