Alyssa Holmes: A tale of two Burlingtons from Ontario to Vermont

Alyssa Holmes hopes her choice to follow Jim Plumer’s half-joking counsel marks a storybook beginning.

The prelude has been gripping enough. Holmes hails from Burlington, Ont., a middle-heavyweight of a city wedged between Toronto and Hamilton. Her neighborhood there is none other than Vermont Crescent.

(Photo by Brian Jenkins, courtesy of UVM Athletics)

 

Plumer implored her to bring her hockey talents to his capstone class at the University of Vermont. UVM is a flagship institution in Burlington, Vt., the big fish of the comparatively modest Northern New England state.

Historically, the homonym is hardly a hollow coincidence. UVM’s city has celebrated a sisterhood with Holmes’ hometown for nearly a half-century. And when she committed, the blueliner unwittingly reopened the vent on what has lately been a dormant partnership.

There was a time when the two Burlingtons staged an annual athletics festival, rotating the hospitality duties each year. Beginning in 1969, the Burlington International Games (BIG) let young Vermonters and Ontarians convene for friendly cultural clashes. The cities later integrated a third community — a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa — to the bonanza.

But by the time the event’s 40th anniversary passed, the luster had faded. The games had discontinued by the year Holmes turned 11.

In a phone chat with Pucks and Recreation, Holmes admitted she has no memory of the festival. Being in an exponentially growing city that boasted 175,000 residents at the 2011 census, it was not impossible to miss. But given the range and richness of her subsequent sports resume, the BIG’s demise could not have been more untimely for her.

Not that she is dwelling on the what-ifs.

“I didn’t know it was even a big thing,” she said. “For sure, if I had the opportunity participate in the event, I would have. But yeah, it’s a cool connection.”

The end of the formal Burlington get-togethers has yet to match the duration of the gap between the cities’ hockey gift exchange. Holmes is the first women’s Catamount from the Ontario town in question and the first overall in 13 seasons.

Per the Internet Hockey Database, three members of the UVM men’s all-time roster came from the Canadian Burlington. Winger Mark Litton and center Rob McConnell both enrolled in 1980. They had previously capped their respective upbringings as Burlington Cougars in the Ontario Junior League.

Forward Scott Mifsud later spent parts of three season with the Cougars, then committed to the Catamounts in 2001. He ran away with the team’s scoring lead with 48 points as a senior in 2004-05.

The Cougars have no women’s equivalent, but Holmes started generating hometown headlines in 2012 at the latest. By that point, she had medaled at a local cross-country meet for four consecutive years. Representing the Sacred Heart of Jesus School, she topped her division in 2012.

The next fall, Holmes elevated to the Corpus Christi Secondary School, where she lettered in five different sports. As a freshman, she joined the Longhorns soccer team on a perfect 20-0 tear to a regional championship. She later keyed Corpus Christi to regional and provincial titles in field hockey and volleyball, respectively.

Individually, Holmes nabbed the school’s athlete of the year laurel as a sophomore and senior. She added a $3,500 athletic scholarship from the town’s Rotary Club of Burlington Lakeshore this past spring.

In a statement to Pucks and Rec, Rotary Club spokesperson Jay Bridle noted that Holmes combined her comprehensive athletic resume with “sustained high academic achievements, along with balancing a part-time job.” He was also apt to note that she roamed a Vermont Street in their town.

Her subsequent move to study and skate in Burlington, Vt., lends the narrative a “uniqueness” that “was not lost on the committee,” Bridle offered.

The Rotary Club doled out its 2017 student awards on June 13. UVM announced Holmes as a member of its incoming recruiting class 13 days later, though she committed the previous fall. That formality fulfilled and sweetened Plumer’s prior statement to Holmes that “you have to come here now because you’re from Burlington, Ont.”

Trivia aside, the university’s athletic therapy studies program radiated the allure for good measure. Rigorous activity consumes Holmes to the point where she is pursuing a degree in exercise and movement science.

Her adopted Burlington’s trademark Green Mountains promise to help sustain her love of running and competitive fever as well.

“I love the outdoors. I just love the atmosphere and the landscape,” she said. “And I know there’s a lot of marathons around here. I would for sure want to compete in one of those.”

Does she think she could match her medal-caliber mojo from middle school? Is she subject to eagle eyes from the Lakeshore Rotary Club and beyond in her bid for a follow-up? Does her de facto status as a Burlington sisterhood revival ambassador raise the urge to please both cities?

“Not yet,” said Holmes. “But I think, in the future, I might because in my hometown it might be talked about more. But right now, there isn’t a lot of pressure, I would say.”

Regardless, better late than never for the versatile Ontarian who missed out on the BIG to test Vermont’s varied grounds. Or for her to start appreciating her long-lost extended geographic family.

“To be honest, I didn’t really know much (about the Burlington connections) until this year,” she confessed. “When I was looking at the school, I didn’t really think of that. But I think it’s kind of unique because not many people have this opportunity.”