Posy O’Keefe is helping to popularize a sport that is well known in Canada – but less so in Australia, where she represents the national team.
O’Keefe is a member of the national women’s box lacrosse team, and plays for the East Fremantle Lacrosse Club. As a Burlington native with dual citizenship thanks to an Aussie dad, she is eligible to represent Australia on the national stage.
“People don’t know what lacrosse is,” O’Keefe said. “People keep thinking it’s like polo with the horses.”
O’Keefe’s uncle Dave got her into lacrosse as a girl, running drills at a court near her house in 2013. She then played for the Burlington Chiefs – missing most of the first season due to an unrelated collarbone injury – and played field lacrosse for the Hamilton Bengals.
In box, O’Keefe plays defence and is a transition player. She’s in charge of moving the ball forward as other players on her team are changing. Playing for a national team is still taking some getting used to, but O’Keefe is up for the challenge.
She’s headed to the inaugural Women’s Box Lacrosse Championship in Utica, New York, in September.
“It feels really weird, there was never a women’s box lacrosse team or international box lacrosse championship,” O’Keefe said. “Being a part of that is phenomenal, but you also get a bit of impostor syndrome when you’re going up against the best that countries like Canada have to offer.”
The Aussies are up against the Canadian national team, as well as Haudenosaunee, American, English, Israeli, Finish, Czech, Dutch, and German squads.
O’Keefe is in her first semester of studying physiotherapy at the University of Notre Dame Australia. The school year looks a bit different to Canada’s as well, as semesters run February - June, and July - November.
“I was attending McMaster for integrated science, then COVID hit, so I dropped out and moved here,” O’Keefe said.
The inaugural Women’s Box Lacrosse Championships will be held concurrently with the men’s tournament, also in Utica. O’Keefe added it’s unusual for two tournaments to run at the same time.
She also competed in Australia’s national lacrosse tournament in February, only the second of its kind in the country.
“Field lacrosse is much bigger here than box,” O’Keefe said. “Probably because getting the gear over here is a lot more expensive.”
Finding gear for a sport primarily played in North America on the other side of the world is difficult and expensive.
“If people in Australia knew more about box lacrosse, I think they’d be a lot more into it,” O’Keefe said. “If we could have access to equipment at reasonable prices, that would also be phenomenal.”
The Australian team will also be playing some warm up games in Brampton the week of September 14.
