Para Worlds Preview: Canada vs. United States

Growing up, Raphaëlle Tousignant was a really athletic child. Although she confronted
adversity alongside her path to the place she is immediately, she has made historical past because the
first girl to play for Canada’s National Para Hockey Team at a significant
worldwide occasion.

She obtained concerned with as many sports activities as she may as a toddler, however she discovered
her ardour at eight years outdated with ringette.

“It was my sport,” Tousignant says. “I actually loved taking part in it. I used to be
residing for it.”

During a ringette recreation, Tousignant fell on her proper hip and a bump started to
type, however neither she nor her household thought it could have long-term
results.

“It was very painful,” she explains. “The solely time it was not painful was
once I was shifting, in order that made me much more athletic as a result of I didn’t have
ache once I was operating or taking part in sports activities.”

The ache and bump continued, so Tousignant visited her household physician. That’s
when it turned clear that one thing was not regular. After extra testing at
the Montreal Children’s Hospital, Tousignant was identified with
osteosarcoma, a bone most cancers discovered generally in youngsters.

She started intensive chemotherapy, however when that was unsuccessful at
shrinking the tumour, Tousignant was confronted with a 12-hour surgical procedure to take away
her proper leg, hip and a part of her pelvis.

A month earlier than her amputation, the then-10-year-old was itching to get again
on the ice for what she thought was the final time.

“In my head, I couldn’t do every other sport after my amputation, I wouldn’t
be capable of return on the ice,” she explains. “So, I requested if it was
doable for me to return on the ice one final time so I can get pleasure from it and
then transfer on.”

Surrounded by her teammates and household, Tousignant was capable of play ringette
one final time earlier than her surgical procedure on Oct. 17, 2012. A yr after her
amputation, as she adjusted to her new actuality, her father started exploring
new sports activities his daughter may take part in, ideally one thing that would
get her again on the ice.

Raphaëlle Tousignant throughout a World Para Hockey Championship exhibition recreation in Moose Jaw, Sask.

That’s when she discovered about para hockey. Once she was bodily able to
strive the game, Tousignant went to the rink along with her physiotherapist and her
dad to provide para hockey a strive.

“I simply fell in love with it. The feeling to be again on the ice, and it was
fairly just like ringette,” she says. “After that observe, that first time
I obtained off the ice, I informed my dad, ‘I’m going to make the ladies’s nationwide
workforce.’”

The spark of ardour for a brand new on-ice sport helped her to shortly elevate
her recreation. At 14, Tousignant turned a member of Canada’s nationwide ladies’s
para hockey workforce and travelled to Norway and Czechia to play in
worldwide tournaments.

Achieving her first para hockey aim so early into choosing up the game,
Tousignant determined to lift the bar and set the next aim for herself: to
symbolize Canada on the Paralympics. However, since ladies’s para hockey is
not a part of the Paralympic program, she would want to play with the lads’s
workforce.

“Everyone was like, ‘That’s not achievable, that’s simply unrealistic. You’re
by no means going to have the ability to try this,’” Tousignant explains.

With a brand new aim in sight, Tousignant set to work. Her recreation improved, and she or he
made Quebec’s males’s provincial roster when she was 16 years outdated. Soon
afterwards, Hockey Canada got here calling to ask Tousignant to Canada’s
National Para Hockey Team NextGen improvement camp.

“All this made me believe that I could actually make it happen,” she says.
“I could be a part of the men’s national team.”

Following her first NextGen camp in 2019, Tousignant made historical past with
Christina Picton as the primary two ladies to play for Canada’s National Para
Hockey Development Team. Tousignant returned to NextGen camp in April 2022
and obtained an invitation to Canada’s National Para Hockey Team choice camp
final September with Alanna Mah.

It was Tousignant’s feistiness, work ethic, communication and imaginative and prescient on the
ice that continued to face out to the teaching workers at every camp.

“She gets 100 per cent of the credit for her growth,” says Team Canada head
coach Russ Herrington. “She’s an important instance of investing in your self and
what that may do.

“We’ve seen what an important individual she is and what an important teammate she is, however
what’s actually accelerated during the last yr is her means to make an
affect when she’s on the ice.”

Christina Picton (left) and Raphaëlle Tousignant.

Although Tousignant was not initially a part of Canada’s National Para Hockey
Team roster originally of the season, her continued robust
performances at camps this spring garnered loads of consideration.

“It wasn’t simply the workers that seen that—there have been loads of veteran
gamers on the workforce who had been additionally advocating on Raph’s behalf,” Herrington
explains. “As a gaggle, all of us definitely felt that she had earned her manner
into representing Canada on the world stage.”

“I used to be not anticipating to be chosen to be a part of that workforce who shall be
going to Moose Jaw. It was simply unbelievable and it’s nonetheless unreal,”
Tousignant says. “I’m simply very completely happy for the 14-year-old me who really
believed in herself and by no means gave up on her dream.”

By competing on the 2023 World Para Hockey Championship in Moose Jaw, Sask.,
Tousignant hopes she is going to encourage additional development within the ladies’s recreation.

“Women need to be on the Paralympic Games, need to have their very own
workforce, need to compete at that stage, too,” she says. “I hope that different
little women [across] Canada or around the globe see me and they’ll say,
‘Hey, I want to be like her,’ as a result of in the event that they wish to be like me, meaning
they’re going to work tremendous exhausting and develop our recreation.”

With this new achievement, Tousignant is nearer than ever earlier than to
attaining her Paralympic dream.

“I do know what I’ve to do to be there, I simply must do it and preserve being
myself,” she says. “I think it’s possible.”