Coquitlam Adanacs: the Mann Cup club named for Canada, backwards

Lacrosse is Canada's official summer sport, British Columbia's oldest sporting obsession, and in the Tri-Cities it has one address: the Poirier Sport and Leisure Complex, home of the Coquitlam Adanacs. The club's name is a piece of patriotic wordplay hiding in plain sight: ADANAC is simply CANADA spelled backwards.

From basketball to boxla

The Adanacs name began in New Westminster in the 1920s, attached to a basketball team before it expanded into lacrosse and played under the banner until 1951. In 1965, former Adanac players formed a new Coquitlam Adanacs lacrosse team, planting the name permanently on this side of the river.

The club briefly became an export. In 1968 the Adanacs moved to Portland, Oregon, as an experiment to stoke interest in box lacrosse in the American Pacific Northwest. When the National Lacrosse Association collapsed before the 1969 season and a relocation to Seattle fell through, the team came home to Coquitlam for good.

Champions at every level

The Adanacs play in BC's seven-team Western Lacrosse Association, whose champion meets Ontario's Major Series Lacrosse champion for the Mann Cup every September. Coquitlam's modern golden era ran through a fierce rivalry with the Victoria Shamrocks: between 1998 and 2003 the clubs met in six straight WLA finals, Victoria taking four and Coquitlam two, with both teams winning national championships in that span. The Adanacs' Mann Cup came in 2001.

The club also holds a unique place in the sport's world history. On July 17, 1980, at Vancouver's Pacific Coliseum, the Adanacs defeated the North American Natives, a team composed of First Nations players and the first team ever to represent First Nations people in a world championship in any sport, to win "Nations in 1980," the first world championship of indoor lacrosse, in a nationally televised game.

The junior pipeline

The Adanacs' future looks as strong as their past. The Junior A Adanacs have won the Minto Cup, Canada's national junior A championship, five times, including the two most recent titles in 2024 and 2025. The junior and senior programs together make Coquitlam one of the country's premier lacrosse cities, and summer nights at Poirier remain one of the Tri-Cities' best sports traditions: fast, loud, affordable, and deeply local.

Catching a game

The WLA season runs through the summer, with playoffs building toward the Mann Cup in September. Home games at the Poirier Sport and Leisure Complex on Poirier Street draw generations of Tri-Cities families, and the building itself, one of the region's busiest recreation centres, sits minutes from downtown Coquitlam with transit access from the Evergreen Line.

The rivalry that defined an era

Ask longtime WLA fans about the league's best years and the answer is usually the Adanacs-Shamrocks wars of 1998 to 2003. Six straight WLA finals between the same two clubs is the kind of sustained rivalry sports leagues dream about, and it produced both teams' national championships in that window. For Coquitlam, the 2001 Mann Cup was the payoff, a title won in the middle of a stretch when every summer seemed to run through the Poirier and Victoria's Memorial Arena.

Lacrosse in the Tri-Cities

The Adanacs are the tip of a much deeper local pyramid. Minor lacrosse associations across Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, and Port Moody feed players toward the junior and senior clubs, and the sport's Indigenous roots as the Creator's game give it a cultural weight beyond the scoreboard. The 1980 Nations championship game at the Pacific Coliseum, where the Adanacs met the first team to represent First Nations people in any world championship, remains one of the most significant nights in the history of the sport.

Why the name endures

The backwards-CANADA wordplay has followed the club from 1920s New Westminster basketball through a failed American experiment to a century of lacrosse at the Poirier. It survives because it fits: a working-class, proudly Canadian club identity that predates the country's modern flag by four decades. When the junior team lifted the Minto Cup in 2025, the name completed another season doing what it has always done, quietly spelling the country into Tri-Cities sports.

Planning a summer night at Poirier

WLA regular season games typically run on weeknights and weekends from late spring into August, with tickets at the door at family-friendly prices. The Poirier Sport and Leisure Complex is at 633 Poirier Street, a short walk or bus ride from Coquitlam's city centre and the Evergreen Line. Expect a fast game: box lacrosse's 30-second shot clock, boards, and constant contact make it the quickest night out in Canadian sport, and the Adanacs' crowds know the rhythms by heart.

* Cover photo: DMighton, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0