Windsor Lancers’ dynasty a product of coach Chantal Vallee’s patience, commitment

Where most coaches would have likely seen a program with little to offer, Chantal Vallee saw an opportunity.

When the Montreal native took over the Windsor Lancers women’s basketball team in 2005 she had hopes of transforming one of the worst programs in the country – they’d never competed in the CIS national championships and had only compiled a small handful of winning seasons – into a national champion.

It seemed like a lofty goal at the time, especially for a 30-year-old who’d never been a head coach above the high school level, but eight years later the Lancers are a budding university basketball dynasty and Vallee is still at the helm.

“Looking back [on what we’ve done] it makes me realize how privileged I am,” she said in a recent phone interview.

Vallee came to Windsor with a five-year championship plan and an educational background in sport to go along with it. She graduated McGill University with a master’s degree in sports psychology and had done research on what it takes to transform a program from worst to first. Her thesis, entitled Building a Successful University Program: Key and Common Elements of Expert Coaches, was published in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology in 2005, the same year she nabbed the job in Windsor.

She believed establishing standards on everything from a physical, emotional, academic and leadership standpoint was the first step in building towards success.

“We established standards that we wanted to see in every aspect of the athlete’s life,” Vallee said. “Even the way we wanted them to treat people, say hello to people and carry themselves on the road. We didn’t want this to be seen as a team that was just [in it] for the social part of the game, but a team that was going to do it for the purpose of trying to transform the program.”

In her first two years the team combined for a 15-29 regular season record, by no means the type of success worth raising a banner for, yet an improvement from the 8-36 record they’d amassed in the two seasons prior to Vallee being hired.

“We were trying to change the mentality and the culture of the program,” she said. We wanted it to be a winning culture . . . There was a lot of tradition of not making the playoffs and not being as successful as anybody wished to be.

“The players I inherited didn’t all buy in. They were certainly a little hesitant and plus it was hard for them because they had already been players in the program so changing their habits was tough.”

It wasn’t until her third season that Vallee had a team she could really call her own. Most of the talent she’d inherited from the previous coaching regimes had moved on and she was able to recruit young players by selling them on the five-year plan, especially after that first season when the team actually won nine games.

“I think one of the first great recruits we got was Dranadia Roc and she came because she knew I was the coach,” Vallee said. “In the Windsor region nobody knew me . . . [Recruiting] was really hard so I think the key for us was first and foremost getting one or two really good recruits and then [understanding that] the other ones would come.”

And they did. Raelyn Prince, a 6-foot-3 Canadian joined Roc in 2006 and Iva Peklova, a 6-foot-5 forward from the Czech Republic came along a year later. Together the threesome of Roc, Prince and Peklova became the nucleus of the Lancers lineup.

That third season Windsor went 14-8 and advanced to the playoffs – all the sudden they seemed like a much more attractive destination especially for local recruits. From there it’s been a steady, year-by-year climb towards the top of the Canadian women’s basketball ranks.

In 2009, Vallee’s fourth year at Windsor, the Lancers went 21-1 and advanced to the national championships, though they fell in the bronze medal game. In 2010, they made it to nationals again, this time advancing to the finals before being defeated by Simon Fraser, who won their third title in four years.

Finally in 2011, all the pieces fell into place.

In front of a home crowd in Windsor, the Lancers defeated the Saskatchewan Huskies 63-49 to give the school its first national title.

“It was quite stressful because you’re in your hometown and you don’t want to disappoint,” Vallee said. “You don’t want to let the city, the organizers and the athletic department down.

“At the same time it’s kind of a fairy tale story where there’s a goal, an objective and a vision to turn our program around in five years and five years later you’re there and you get a chance to accomplish it. It was unbelievable.”

Korissa Williams was a rookie on that championship team and calls the victory one of the highlights of her basketball career and her most memorable moment in three-plus years with the Lancers.

“Everybody was there, everybody watched it,” she said over the phone from Toronto. “My family was sitting in the stands and my family in New Zealand and Africa actually streamed it and watched it.

“As a rookie I didn’t really know what to expect. I came from a [provincial] win in high school but it [didn’t compare] to this. Just seeing the community and [coach] Vallee, everybody was just so proud and happy.”

The Amherstburg, Ont., native wasn’t a key factor in Windsor’s first championship season, but under Vallee she’s developed into a formidable threat on offensive side of the ball and is the team’s top scorer, averaging 15.5 points per game, next to Jessica Clemencon, a fifth-year player.

“She’s obviously an incredible talent,” Vallee said of Williams. “She came in first year and I think she was the sixth man off the bench and then moved into the rotation in her second and third year. It moved from just having pure talent to her spending more time in the gym and her coming in the summer and shooting and her being involved and working on her game.

“I think by the time she graduates she’ll be a really good all around player that will be able to do all kinds of different things on the floor.”

Vallee contemplated leaving the program after winning the national championship. She’d worked five-plus years to put together a contending team and admits to feeling distraught at the end of the 2011 season. She’d accomplished her goal and wondered whether it was time to move on.

Luckily for the school she didn’t and now, more than two years after the Lancers captured their first Bronze Baby Trophy, Vallee is known in Windsor as more than just the coach who turned a lowly program into a one-time national champion.

The 2011 title proved to be just beginning of Vallee’s run. She’s since led the Lancers to two more championships and her team has the chance to inch closer towards history if they can keep the streak alive in 2014.

Should they win their fourth-straight championship this year, they’re off to a 5-1 start, they’d become just the second team in CIS history to do so. Laurentian University holds the record at five-straight, which they accomplished between 1974 and 1979.

Vallee says her team isn’t focused on history though, nor do they use it as a motivational tactic. However, hoisting another CIS title is still the goal, especially with Windsor playing host to the national championships again this spring.

“I can’t even imagine not winning on our home court again,” Vallee said. “Our fifth-year girls have made it to the finals [in every season they’ve played.] They lost their first one; they’re not going to lose their last one. There is no other goal but that one.”