LAURA MACLACHLAN
FIELD HOCKEY
SCHOOL: Handsworth (North Vancouver)
FRESHMAN’S FUTURE: Northeastern
NORTH VANCOUVER — Among the many abilities she brings to the field hockey pitch, Laura MacLachlan is noted by many to be a stickhandler of the highest degree.
Within the sport that has long been her passion, it’s the skill that most deftly defines her talents on the turf, the one which through its taps, its fakes and its bursts has allowed her to traverse a path to those pockets of open calm where time and space, however brief, afford the opportunity to look the future square in the eye.
Yet in the case of MacLachlan, a rising star within the Canadian national team program, and a three-time provincial Triple A champion midfielder with North Vancouver’s Handsworth Royals, it’s a figurative version of that very same skill which has allowed her to navigate through the congestion of uncertainty and fear all high school seniors face as they plot the next chapter of their lives.
“I am thinking of studying in the health sciences field but who knows?” begins MacLachlan, set to jet across the continent in the late summer to begin collegiate life in Boston while playing and studying at NCAA Div. 1 Northeastern University. “Right now, my plan is a little skewed because eventually I plan to come back and go to law school. I like to keep doors open.”
Without doubt, on so many levels, her dedication to the sport has already done that.
“In the last three or four years, her skills have just gone to a new level,” reports Graham Walker, who has coached MacLachlan the last 12 years within the West Vancouver Field Hockey club, and the past two seasons at Handsworth. “She is a dream and a joy to watch.”
Especially when situations dictate that she take her on-field generalship to the next level.
“She has always been a team player first,” says Walker, “but if we are down, she can take things into her own hands. There are times when she will have three or four players on her, but she is just very difficult to play against. She can take the ball the entire length of the field. And if she decides to go on a personal attack, you have to deploy so many resources to try and stop her. That opens up the whole field.”
Not to mention an open field of possibility, one which begins the moment she starts packing her bags for Beantown.
“I wanted to go to a city with history, that had culture, that was near water,” begins MacLachlan. “When I went to Boston, and saw all the cool, red-brick buildings, I was blown away. I fell in love.”
Adds Walker: “She really is the complete player.”
Sometimes, there is no stickhandling around the truth.
