Goalie Charline Labonté nearly quit ice hockey early in her career when she was playing for the Acadie-Bathurst Titan of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League from 1999-2000. She became distraught after being replaced two games into the 2000-2001 season for trying out for the national under-22 team. She had previously played with Team Quebec at the 1999 Canada Winter Games, winning a silver medal, but did not make the Canadian Women’s National Team as a starter until 2005. In the meantime her major international hockey experience came with Team Canada as an alternate goalie: first at the 2002 Winter Olympics, and then at the 2003 and 2004 World Championships. In Canada she began playing with the Montreal Axion of the National Women’s Hockey League in 2004 and won bronze with Team Quebec at the 2005 National Women’s Championships. After making the national team in 2005 she captured a silver medal at that year’s World Championships. Just prior to the 2006 Winter Olympics, she helped bring the Montreal Axion an NWHL championship.
Labonté’s performance at the Olympics, however, was worthy of the gold medal that she acquired, allowing only one goal in the three games that she played, including the final. She followed her international success with a gold medal at the 2007 World Championships, silver in 2008 and 2009 (where she was named the tournament’s top goaltender), and a second Olympic title in 2010. As of those Games she is a physical education student at McGill University, where she plays with the McGill Marlets and, in 2007, she brought the team Canadian Interuniversity Sport silver at the ice hockey tournament. In 2008 and 2009, however, the team was the CIS champion and here too she was named as the top goaltender.
Canada