I remember deciding to quit rep hockey to “just play high school” in grade 10. My first game on the varsity hockey team as a grade 10 was against KCI and boy was I wrong about “just playing high school”. The pace was faster than any game I can recall playing as an A player growing up, and I knew as a goalie I would have to adapt quickly playing against guys up to 3 years older than me. 

That year was the strongest I had seen the WCSSAA hockey league in my three seasons playing, with teams like Grand River, Resurrection, Elmira, SJAM, Bluevale, Forest Heights and us at Preston all being very competitive with each other. We eventually finished second in our division and qualified for the playoffs for the first time, in a long time. Not a single member of our team had played in a WCSSAA playoff game, not even our fifth years. It was incredibly nerve wracking and we were not able to overcome that in a 3-1 loss to Forest Heights in the first round. Resurrection, a team we beat in the regular season, went on to beat Grand River in the finals, which just goes to show how tight the league was that year (2013-2014).

I remember sitting in the dressing room after the loss, tears in my eyes as any Canadian kid who just lost a playoff game would have, and taking a look around the room, thinking to myself how many grade 11’s we had sitting there. I was the youngest player on the team, and we had 10 other players returning. All I could think to myself was “I can’t wait till next year”.

Next season came around and we had lost some key grade 12s and fifth year guys, only having two grade 12's staying for a fifth year, one being our assistant captain and league MVP Ryan Maksymyk. The core of our team remained, and we also made some key additions to the team, notably future captain Quintin Mondesire and transfer student from Glenview Matt Patterson. We had all the makings of a contender and we were itching to redeem our early playoff exit from the year before.

We started off the season with a huge 5-3 win over Grand River in our home barn, this game also birthed the early days of the legendary Preston Auditorium’s “Crazy Corner” which grew, slowly at first and then rapidly as the team continued to win games and create hype around the school. The boys were buzzing all year only losing 1 game all season, a hard fought battle against SJAM at RIM Park, and we were on a high note all season until we ran into our first major bump, in the quarterfinals against Monsignor Doyle. We entered the game maybe a little arrogant, thinking it would be a smooth ride to the finals, but Doyle didn’t care that we finished first or that we had only lost one game, and they came out flying. All credit to the guys on that Doyle team, they outworked us early and humbled us, we had to score with 15 seconds left, after coming back from down a few goals, just to scrape our way to the semi-finals.

The semi’s against SJAM went smoother, as we won the first two games of the best of three series and we were off to the finals which was a goal we had set for ourselves before the season began.

The WCSSAA finals were then set to be played at our home arena “The Aud”. The atmosphere in the arena was absolutely electric, our school’s self-proclaimed “booster club” made up of the guys who came out to every game and stood in that crazy corner, made sure the game lived up to the hype, organizing a speaker to blast pre game songs as well as taking care of posters and arena decorations. It was by far the biggest crowd I had ever seen at any high school sport, if the bleachers at the Aud weren’t at capacity then they were pretty darn close. We ended up winning that game 2-1 and the entire team did an incredible job of getting the lead, and then completely locking the game down after that. From the second period onward I faced minimal shots, as our neutral zone defense and d-zone was impenetrable, a credit to our incredible coaching. 

Winning that game on home ice, in front of a wild crowd of excited students, and ending an 18-year hockey championship drought at Preston is a feeling I will never forget.

Playing for Preston and representing the school was always very important to me, and I was lucky enough to be coached by my father Geoff Haddaway for 3 years. One thing he always instilled in us, on and off the ice, was “doing things the right way”. He made us focus on the hard work and the process, and he always said to us when things weren’t going how we wanted: “do things the right way, and we can live with the results”. This applies to life on and off the ice. If you play your hardest right till the final buzzer and come short, it’s a lot easier to live with the results knowing you did everything you could, things just may have not gone your way. Our coaching staff was rounded out by John Skovsgaard and Adrian Houwer, two coaches from our school’s football program who really brought that hardnosed, football mentality to our hockey team. Playing for this team helped my teammates and I learn the importance of hard work, and doing things the right way, not the easy way.

Although I graduated in 2016 I will never turn down an opportunity to speak about PHS. I am incredibly thankful to have been able to attend Preston and to represent the school in athletics, and for the memories and relationships I made in my time there as well as for the lessons I learned. 

Lucas Haddaway - January 2018