Two Burrards players are still in the mix after Team Canada’s coaching staff has selected the 25 female lacrosse players who will continue to train with the team in preparation for this summer’s 2017 FIL Women’s Lacrosse World Cup.
The latest round of cuts were made after a Thanksgiving weekend training camp at the Team USA Fall Classic in Baltimore, Maryland.
Two Burrards products have made the team in Megan Kinna, who is from Maple Ridge and attends Northwestern University, and Ashley Bull of Langley who is with Canisius.
The team selection process has been ongoing for nearly a year, and with so many great players to choose from, narrowing it down was surely was not an easy task.
The staff received 127 tryout applications in late 2015, and of those 79 participated in the team’s first camp at Syracuse University in August. Roughly half were eliminated from contention afterwards, leaving the 41 players that took part in the most recent camp.
“The entire staff has worked tirelessly to select the 25 best players that will help us compete on the world stage,” said women’s field program director Gary Gait. “This talented and athletic group of athletes will help us compete for gold!”
Kinna has been making the cut her whole career. She was a member of the U-19 National Team that won the 2015 FIL Rathbones World Championships gold medal. She finished the world championships with five goals, four assists and 11 draw controls. She was also a member of Team B.C. girls box lacrosse and Team BC girls field lacrosse, and helped lead Team BC to three box lacrosse national championships from 2012-14. Kinna also won a field lacrosse national championship with Team BC in 2012.
With Northwestern she was selected as 2016 Under Armour All-American.
Kinna was also a provincial All-Star MVP and 2014 Provincial field tournament MVP. She played 14 years for the Maple Ridge Burrards, including eight years of boys box lacrosse.
At the Fall Classic, Canada went winless in a series of exhibition games against some of the top lacrosse nations during the event, losing to Australia (13-10), England (7-6) and the U.S. (20-5), but the staff used the games to evaluate the 41 women that were competing for a spot on the final roster.
The coaching staff will have a few more opportunities to evaluate their roster, with training camps scheduled for January and May. They will cut the roster from 25 to 18 in time for this summer’s 2017 FIL Women’s Lacrosse World Cup in Guildford, England and 2017 World Games in Wroclaw, Poland.