Staying busy with sports

Times Reporter   

 

Grade 12 Strathmore High School student Alyssa Lavallee likes to keep a packed schedule; she plays for the Spartans’ senior volleyball and badminton teams, but also plays fastball and hockey outside of school as well. She’s currently the captain of the midget Strathmore Storm in the Tier 2 Rocky Mountain Female Hockey League, leading her team in scoring.

“It keeps me busy,” Lavallee said. “I don’t like not doing stuff, and I love just staying active. I just get into whatever I can, pretty much.”

Lavallee and her family moved to Strathmore seven years ago, from Ottawa.

“She was in gymnastics when she was young. When we moved to Ottawa, she decided she wanted to play hockey instead of doing gymnastics,” Alyssa’s mother Michelle said. “She was the one that always led the way, and was energetic – always has that team sportsmanship attitude.”

That same team attitude led her to get involved with Operation Backpack two years ago.

“They collect backpacks from people around Calgary,” Lavallee said. “People will fill the backpacks with necessities that people living on the street would need – toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, a blanket, warm gloves. On one night, in December, they’ll give it out to the homeless people in Calgary, all these full backpacks. It’s pretty cool.”

Lavallee is leading the fundraising charge at Strathmore High School, and did last year as well.

“With my class personally, everyone brought in one item on the list, and then our teacher bought the backpacks – one for a boy, one for a girl,” Lavallee said. “I kind of just let everyone know about it; got the brochures, talked to classes if they wanted me to – just got people involved with it.”

At Prince Edward Park in Calgary last year, Operation Backpack set up a large trailer for those in need to receive their necessities.

“It’s really cool, that kind of thing,” Lavallee said. “You hear about people going around to other places around the world, but it’s just a local thing in Calgary. There’s so many people in Calgary that you don’t even think of that are living on the streets. It was a really cool experience to go and hand out backpacks last year.”

With only one week to put the organizing all together, Strathmore High School donated 25 backpacks this year.

“The really neat thing is, in the first year, she got eight because she didn’t really get it out – it was more friends and family who did it,” mother Michelle said. “So she set a goal to double that, and she got 45 last year.”

The senior has taken her SATs and applied to different universities, hoping to get a fastball scholarship while taking kinesiology.

“I think that’s up her alley, with her giving sort of way as well. She loves working with kids,” Michelle said; Alyssa also works at Camp Chestermere.

“I hope to go to the States. I’ve been just looking at different schools right now and getting myself out there, but I’ve also applied to schools in Canada,” Lavallee said. 

With all the sports Lavallee is involved with, she has no trouble pegging fastball as the one she wants to stick with.

“It’s the one that I love the most,” she said. “I’ve been playing hockey since I was 6 or 7, but hockey is just something that I love to play. It’s not really that competitive for me. Fastball, I would love to play it longer. I like how it’s a team game but it’s also an individual game at the same time.”

Lavallee says fastball doesn’t get the credit as a thinking game, and that most people assume it’s just hitting and throwing.

“With the batting and the mental part of it too, you always have to be thinking,” she said. “There’s a lot of things you need to think about when you’re up to bat or in the field.”

Lavallee plays third base and outfield for the Strathmore Thunder, but also played with an older age group – Calgary Mystique. 

Lavallee’s mother is glad she’ll be settling on just one sport come post-secondary.

“You have to pick and choose your sports right?” Michelle said. “Because academics are huge.”