GRAND FORKS, ND (trfnews.i234.me) Gov. Doug Burgum on Wednesday presented North Dakota’s highest citizen honor to the state’s first Olympic gold medal winners, officially inducting twin sisters and hockey stars Monique Lamoureux-Morando and Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson into the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Hall of Fame.
monique and jocelyn you’ve inspired us all with your hard work your convictions and your courage on and off the ice and now is the time it’s my great honor with the concurrence of the secretary of state and the director of the historical society to present you together and within your own each individual and unique rights the theodore roosevelt rough rider award to actually make the presentation and unveil the portrait which the twins have not yet seen uh i’ll ask that secretary jaeger and director higard come to the stage director peterson come to the stage and join us and uh and we will make the presentation [Music] the official description on these awards read an honorary rank of colonel in the north dakota rough riders was established during the 1961 dakota territory centennial as north dakota’s highest civilian honor the award recognizes north dakotans who’ve been influenced by the state in achieving national recognition in their fields of endeavor thereby reflecting credit and honor upon the north dakota and its citizens at this time we’d ask the secretary and director to please reveal the portrait [Applause] foreign i got a question for the twins can you tell which one is each of you in the portrait or is it uh okay but i we’re excited uh tomorrow the portrait of monique and josten will join the ranks of legendary north dakotans uh in the theodore roosevelt roughrider hall of fame in the north dakota capitol building but the tradition is that there are two paintings made identical one for the capital and one for for the two of you and i think this year we actually do we have i split around i think we might have three the first time we’ve had three so you don’t have to like lend it back and forth to each other uh but anyway we uh we’re we’re here at that point uh which i know everybody’s been waiting for uh which is an opportunity to have a few words from monique and jocelyn so the podium is yours [Applause] this is the longest i’ve gone without going to the bathroom in a really long time but i’m going to make it first and foremost i just want to say thank you to governor burgum the state of north dakota and for putting putting this event on and jody and the ralph whenever monique and i have emailed you texted you you always respond and you’re probably wondering what we’re asking for next but thank you for this event but also thank you for giving us a home to train and play not just while we played for the university of north dakota but beyond our college career monique and i skated i don’t even want to add up the hours of ice time that we logged here just the two of us or with a spare goalie or a couple extra teammates that would come on the ice with us um we’ve always been so appreciative of the support that we’ve had and the ice maintenance personnel probably got really annoyed with us eventually because we always had the early ice times but the ice was always done and the lights were always on we we always appreciated that thank you for everyone coming here today and like david said our humbleness might be our greatest strength and greatest weakness so sitting up here accepting all this praise is really uncomfortable for us but thank you all for coming here to celebrate this award and coach stafford doc hacker who doesn’t have facebook so she’s not watching this live and david and governor burgum thank you for the kind words um you all know us in a unique way that that many people don’t um and so your your words mean a lot to us very few people know the the hours and the adversity that that we’ve gone through and there are a select few who know know the ups and downs and know the downs really well and you guys have always been there every step of the way since you’ve known us um there’s one thing i’ve learned throughout our career we obviously didn’t get here on our own and many of you have been a part of our journey our career throughout you know when we’re really little to when we retired we have coaches teachers trainers we have teammates family and friends here today and community members who have supported us throughout the years we’ve traveled the world we’ve accomplished sports most coveted prize and olympic gold medal we’ve achieved our childhood dreams and after all of it after all the wins and losses the planes and bus rides we’ve always come back home to north dakota growing up we played on boys teams because we didn’t have an option to play on girls teams we we would try out for boys teams there’s never a spot guarantee let alone for two of us but there i believe we have some coaches here tony brandon and kelly thank you for always giving us an opportunity to just be our best [Music] we realize how special that is and how unique that is and not everywhere does every girl get that opportunity in a situation like we had and so i want to express a special thanks for our youth coaches who just always gave us an opportunity from the english coulee to the olympic stage we took all of those opportunities and ran with them big and small didn’t matter you know if it was with the team usa jersey or if it was uh open puck that jock was probably going to bury us in the snow bank in the freezing cold we ran with every opportunity that came our way and um it it shaped who we were learning how to play on the on the english coulee without parents telling us what to do without coaches barking orders at us like coach stafford said we played because we loved it and we enjoyed it and no matter where hockey took us we played with that love whether it was the goals were coming easy whether the journey was going well or we were facing more adversity we always found a way to truly love and enjoy what we were doing and i think that’s ultimately why we’ve been able to do what we’ve done for as long as we have mom and dad thank you uh we come by it honestly i think every time our mom’s name was mentioned in a speech she got uncomfortable so we definitely come by it honestly but um thank you for always teaching us that the voices outside the arena doesn’t matter you taught us to strong stand strong in our beliefs belief in ourselves and believe in our goals and our ability to attain them what anyone else really thought never really mattered to us we always wanted to make you proud but we never felt like we needed your approval and that is a gift and as a parent today i know how special that is we just really played because we loved it we always knew we had your support whether you’re in the rink or not we have four older brothers and we had a lot of big games where we didn’t have our mom and dad there and i think that really just taught us that we weren’t always the most important people in the in the room or in the family um and but whether you were there or not we knew we always had your support and our brothers whether you guys were there or not we knew you were always cheering us on in the gold medal game i like to tell this story because i think the reason we are the way we are is because we always expected the most out of ourselves and after the gold medal game the first thing my dad said was you could have had two and i was slightly irritated by the comment but then i saw the game on replay over a year later and it turns out he was right i should have had two i saw the play and you’re right i definitely should have had two goals that came you you guys always expected us to compete dad you brought the intensity you still do and mom you showed us what it meant to compete with yourself as you competed in 26 marathons after having six kids we saw what training looked like you would wake up early you would go on long runs we’d sometimes bike with you and then we would turn around and go home because you were going too long but one thing that i recall in our sophomore year at shattuck it was when the 2006 olympics were about to start her mom had made a comment about it takes eight years to become world class um and so i kind of did the math on when monique and i had started training and i was like okay i think we can make the 2010 olympics if we just stick with it and your example for us i think as we look back now it really just shed light on what it takes to show up every day and then our brothers phil jacques peer paul mario’s not here today you guys also showed us that our entire lives with all these lessons learned and observed at a young age we always understood that despite even if you put even if you put all that work in you’re never guaranteed success you’re never guaranteed a spot on the team or a place on the podium and our mom sent us uh the cliff cushman letter to the youth uh when we were at shattuck our freshman year and i this has always stuck with me and sort of paraphrased cliff said in spite in in a split second all the many years of training pain sweat blisters and agony running through running were simply and irrevocably wiped out but i tried i would much rather have failed knowing i had put forth an honest effort than to have never tried at all however there is nothing i can do about it now but get up pick the centers for my wounds and take one more step followed by one more and one more until the steps turn into miles and the miles turned into success and our success has never been defied by games won or lost by the color of metals hung around our neck and dad the face in the mirror speech i think always rings true and i think whenever we when i say we all our brothers and monique and i the face in the mirror speech it’s like yeah we got it we know it we got it dad to face the mere speech but that’s defined our definition of success since we’re really little and we’ve taken that and let that permeate into the rest of our lives i want to say thank you to my brothers individually because you guys are just like monique and i were individual but we we talk about you guys as the boys or our brothers and phil you’ve outplayed all of us now as the oldest you’re the only one still playing but for the few that get to see him train we we all know why and you’ve been an example since we were really little i remember um i think it was you were in high school and you called carl gehring and you started he started working with you a couple times a week and the impact that that had just to ask someone for help but then to to pay it forward and what you’re doing today for the young goalies in north dakota but just the example you’ve set for monique and i has been it’s been a gift to watch you train and play and it’s shaped how we went about our careers in our day to day jack you never took it easy on us i think you were probably the toughest on us out of everyone growing up and that’s probably why as coach stafford said i’m i don’t he didn’t say loose cannon but i could have been a loose cannon a few times uh on the ice here or i think coach idolski is here um i would see red or black i’m not sure um but you taught us how to how to score goals and be tough and seeing you work through your adversity and excel through through the air force and what you do now thank you for your service and since we’re honorary colonels you technically salute us now uh peer paul um i remember when we were deciding if we were gonna transfer the words have already been shared here today by governor burgum you said have the courage of your own conviction monique and i went from playing at the university of minnesota we were very good that year made it to a frozen four and decided we were gonna transfer to at the time um one of the worst teams in the country at the time um and and we turned it around with the staff here with the players that were brought in um just never forget the conversations we had and the belief that you had on us but also how you helped us believe in ourselves mario is not here today but i remember dad always talking about how mario rallied the troops in the room and was just a leader he was a guy that all his teammates wanted to be around and i guess we tried we tried to be like all of you guys in that sense and we try to take a piece of all of our brothers and make that the best part of our game um [Music] uh so i have all these notes on my list and then i get to a few people and i just have their names because i really wasn’t sure what to say but anthony monique’s husband there are very few people who who know what training looks like day in and day out and you literally took our game to another level and without you i’m not sure we we have gold medals or we have the impact that we have in in the games that we played it’s very rare to to be at the end of your career and be getting better and playing the best that we’ve played or we had played and anthony had a big part in that brent um transferring to north dakota was obviously based around our sport someone can crack a joke one of the greatest gifts of transferring here to north dakota was meeting my husband and there are very few people in life who i would i would say are willing to to do what anthony and brent have done for monique and i um they’ve sacrificed just as much as we have and you’ve been there every step of the way and i just can’t say thank you enough for for not just being there but being a part of the journey and also making me a better teammate a better player when things were tough you didn’t just let me sulk uh you made me want to be better and now i think you know we had our nelson we tried to snap a family photo here and he was all excited to be in the ralph and it’s the hockey palace is what we called it and he was all excited um hopefully um you know we sh we show nelson or our kids um you know what this place meant to us one day and what it takes to to accomplish our dreams yeah thank you i don’t know what else to say and i think to the only person who i can say i really would not be here without um would be monique we don’t hug we don’t really say nice things to each other and if monique’s about to cry doing something or if she’s like getting emotional during the speech she looks at me like i’m supposed to make it stop but i we wouldn’t be where we are without each other i remember one time i wasn’t feeling good at shattick and i’m like i’m just going to take the day off and monique goes well i’m going to go get the training in and then i’d show up five minutes later because that’s the type of accountability we had every step of the way we’ve challenged each other to be our best we’ve said things and not the nicest way to each other that we don’t only say to each other and never a teammate but it’s the expectation that we were going to be our best every single day no matter what we were doing and we held each other to that standard since we were little too even even now um workouts get competitive for some stupid reason um so thanks and congrats i think you’re technically 45th and i’m 46. but governor burgham did call me for the award so you’re saying so as i look back on our career although we didn’t play for anyone’s approval i hope that we’ve made you all proud i know that we put our best foot forward every single day we try to be the best we could be be the best teammates we could be be the best community members classmates friends that we could be and make a difference along the way but like in sports life when your journey comes to an end the awards and the accolades will not be mentioned but how you treated others and made a difference will be the most important part so i hope that yes hockey has given us this amazing platform but how we’ve impacted the people around us is is what matters most and i hope that’s what people remember so thank you all i think you went a little over time that’s okay [Applause] so as we were getting our speeches ready um we made sure to cross-reference everything to make sure i wasn’t just going to come up here and then say the same thing over again to spare you all so and we came prepared as sometimes we’ve gotten a few think awards and then we show up to an event and then we realize well this is a big deal we probably should have prepared a little bit more but today we were prepared knowing today is a huge honor for us and appreciate everybody that’s taken time out of their busy schedules to be here uh jocelyn mentioned earlier to governor burgum how we think it’s fitting that we receive this award are receiving it this year as opposed to last year with our retirement me adding another one to our family and just where we’re at in our lives i think it’s almost fitting we had to wait a year to to get this and as jocelyn mentioned so last year governor burgum called jocelyn on a friday afternoon usually when we’re about to head out to the lake and she walks into the house to come get me and she goes governor burgum’s on on the phone i can’t repeat what i said it was a swear word you liar she goes no really he’s on the phone so when governor burgum called it was obviously an honor but we appreciate you being the one to announce that we got the award and to to receive that call from you was a a very um a big honor for us so now whenever and joss and i do speaking engagements we usually talk about our siblings in our age range and since our parents are here tonight i figured it would be fitting for you guys to hear the reaction um that we get one hour i say our age range usually gets a pretty good grasp from the crowd so right now our ages are 32 33 34 35 and 36. as parents now i realize how crazy that is slightly irresponsible but but in all seriousness i think our success comes from your irresponsibility um you guys instilled in us the values and character that have made us successful yes we were talented and gifted but we always believed we were successful because of our unwavering pursuit to improve every single day in all aspects of our lives you exposed us to many different things athletically that allowed us to figure out what we truly love to do but in that we also figured out what we didn’t love to do and we always had to finish the season out even if we didn’t want to do whatever it was we were doing at the time so whenever joss and i would go to dance lessons sometimes we’d be pretending to sleep in the car so we wouldn’t have to go it never worked we always had to go in we’re going to swim swim practice where we learned how to swim the laps literally and figuratively that was the one sport we probably pulled on the lane lines all the time and cheated a little bit but you always taught us to finish what we started and in life you may not always love what you’re doing sorry my papers stuck together i mean i always love what you’re doing or you may be having a tough time but if you stick with it you’ll get to the other side you’ll finish and you’ll continue on and those tough times usually you learn more lessons from those than your moments of success to our brothers thank you for never taking it easy on us now it might be because you just wanted to beat up on your little sisters but it truly taught us to bring our best in everything that we did whether it was a game of checkers or trying to get to the front seat of the car people always ask us who is the best hockey player in our family and our answer is usually we are because we always tell them we took the best quality of each of our brothers and then put it into ourselves so fill your attention to detail to being better every day jock your skill set and your scoring touch pure paul your grit and tenacity and mario’s leadership was truly a combination for us to be successful you may not have noticed it but as your little twin sisters we paid attention to everything that you were doing and learned quickly what hard work entailed we also quickly learned how to not get in trouble with mom and dad and to stay out of trouble but i think everything that our parents taught us growing up either intentionally or unintentionally and then i remember the people who stamped those values into our beings so we’re fortunate to have had so many influential coaches and teachers some that are here tonight that have helped steer our determination and help form us as people i still remember our seventh grade math teacher this is carney some of you may have had her as a teacher in here she pointed at me one day and told me to come to her desk and told me my grade which was an a it was like a 93 so just on the cusp and she said good work does not always mean your best work and you can do better and i got back to my desk i was like wow she’s just being tough on me but i think that’s a lesson that we can all learn even though good enough might get us by it might make us succeed at the end of the day have you put truly put your best foot forward and i think we’ve taken that into everything that we do especially as hockey players coach stafford i think having you as a coach truly changed our trajectory as hockey players and as people uh when we got accepted to shattuck he ran to the nearest phone so everyone here is old enough to know when there was like phones connected to the wall and everything so he ran veneers phone called my parents who didn’t have cell phones at the time to let us know that we we had been accepted you quickly saw our love for the game but you also saw our desire to be great to go about our day-to-day work with integrity and respect but you taught us how to bring others along with us that by helping others be better it also made us better and more importantly it made the team better a lesson that i think it i mean it was no greater lesson for us to learn and i think really translated into our leadership into college and on the national team and as jocelyn mentioned you talked about the first layer of our heart and our for our pure love for the game and that lesson centered us in our toughest times as athletes for those of you don’t know joss and i made that olympic team in 2018 by the skin of our teeth and when we went home for christmas break we we went across the street on the pond pier paul was there with his friend matt i was with our sister-in-law i was in a sling so i couldn’t i couldn’t play but they played a little two-on-two in the pond and very quickly we realized like this is why we’re here because of our love of the game and even in the hardest of times we never lost that love and the moment that re-centered us helped us to go on and make hockey history doc hacker she gave us the tools to play our best in any circumstance and now for anyone that really knows us as hockey players knows that we’re pretty serious people i think as we got older we learned to lighten up a little bit but doc hacker helped bring that out helped bring that out out in us so for jocelyn and i whenever we were on the bench and things might have been getting a little tense we would like have our own little code thing that we would do to each other and now that we’re done playing it’s not really a secret anymore so we would go at each other on the bench just to kind of like snap out of it whether you made a mistake or just needed a little pick-me-up we would do that and usually get a smile on our face and we we’d forget about whatever was going whatever was going on we have always understood that one day our hockey careers would be over and we would have to move on to other things while always being singularly focused during our hockey careers we never lost sight of the bigger picture being good at hockey and winning gold medals and championships was great but it’s how you treat others along that journey that truly mattered to us and i think david you recognized that and us immediately and how important making a difference outside of the rink and outside of a team setting was to us and you have inspired us to continue to make an impact and help others and cheer for the one behind lastly anthony as jocelyn mentioned even after two olympics when most people would say we were at the top of our game you helped us find another level i had to beg anthony to train us after we had been we were dating at the time and begged him for like two months to train josten and i and he finally gave in and i’m glad you did because even as national team members for such a long period of time we found another level which truly as jocelyn said i don’t know if we have our gold medals without you so thank you and then since announcing our retirement in february it has allowed a lot of time for reflection and also i’ve added another baby so maybe not as much time as i think um as a parent to two little boys i’ve asked myself did i do things in a way that i want my boys to do winning medals and being an olympic champion is a dream come true but i do what i did i do it in a way that would make them proud in a way i would want them to pursue anything they are passionate about i want them and any young person to find an unrelenting pursuit to improve and succeed and and even if they fall short they will pick themselves back up or pick out the cinders as um cliff cushman said pick themselves back up and continue on and try again i want them to dream big and if they achieve those dreams or not i hope they realize that it’s about the journey along the way and how you impact others that is truly important and as coach elander said it’s nice to be important but it’s more important to be nice even in the pursuit of your dreams or in your day-to-day life it takes no effort or talent to help others and to make an impact because you never know how that act of kindness will affect someone or you might light a dream for them to go on and pursue and achieve so i just want to say thank you to everybody oh i did not put this in my notes and now i almost forgot to say it because i didn’t want justin to see what i wanted to say about her um i’m not going to cry and then i won’t look at you to make it stop um i don’t think joss and i have the medals that we do or the success that we’ve had without each other we’ve always as you can tell we always speak and we and plural because that’s just how our lives have always been it’s been intertwined in everything that we do and we always assumed that twins were like us and then quickly realized that not all twins get along and not all twins are best friends and have the same friends but we have a special bond that has brought us all over the world that has helped us achieve our goals and our dreams and then even our greatest sorrows and losses but we’ve always found a way to move forward and to be better and anthony and brent we appreciate that you guys don’t mind that we call each other like five times a day even though we see each other every day and you guys deserve a thank you for that as well but again thank you everybody for being here tonight even if we didn’t mention you everybody that’s here that’s been a part of our journey in some small way or in a great way we appreciate everyone’s support it might not always be visible for us but it’s always felt and so thank you um yeah that’s all i got you
Sisters from Grand Forks Awarded North Dakota’s Highest Citizen Honor at Engelstad Arena
