Billy Fitzgerald

William James "Billy" Fitzgerald (1888 to 1926) was a Canadian field lacrosse player from St. Catharines, Ontario, who became one of the best-known professionals of the sport in the years before the First World War. He took up the game in 1904, played two unbeaten seasons with the amateur St. Catharines Athletics, and turned professional in 1909 with the Toronto Lacrosse Club. In 1911 he was lured west to the Vancouver Lacrosse Club, where he scored 15 goals in 14 appearances and helped win the Minto Cup before returning to Toronto. He later coached the men's lacrosse team at Hobart College and worked as a referee, and he died in 1926 at the age of 38 after complications from surgery. In a 1950 vote of Canadian writers he placed second to Newsy Lalonde as the best lacrosse player of the century to that point, and he was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1961 and the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1965.