Canada men’s head coach Paul Lapolice has a limited coaching background in flag football, but he has been involved as a coach in the Canadian Football league for more than 20 years as a either a head coach or an offensive coordinator since 2000.

Lapolice was coaching his son’s 7 on 7 team the past two seasons before taking on the Team Canada role this year. He is an American who has been in Canada since 2000, and hails from Nashua, New Hampshire. He played football at Plymouth State College and coached for eight years at several Division III schools and the FCS University of New Hampshire before going to the Canadian Football league at the young age of 29.

During the buildup to the 2025 IFAF Americans Flag Football Championships, IFAF has posed three questions to the head coaches of the men’s and women’s teams about to compete for continental glory.

What are the goals for your team in this tournament? Our goals are to continue to grow and work together and to increase our world ranking in the Flag community and play our best football to date at this tournament.

What will be the strengths of your team and which players should we watch for? I believe we have a very intelligent football team that really understands what we are trying to do play in and play out and they are also tremendous football players.

If I were to name a few players to watch I would say on defense our rusher Phillippe Pharand had an excellent International Bowl (where Canada beat USA) as did our safety Emile Chenevert. Offensively we felt our quarterback Michael O'Connor was excellent in his first four games of his flag career, as was Francois Rocheleau our receiver.

What do you think of the group you have been drawn into (USA, Brazil, Guatemala, Colombia)? We are not overly concerned with what group we are in and are happy to play and compete. We knew we would be in with some of the top teams in the world on either side of the bracket, so we are happy to play whomever we drew.

If you want to improve your standing, you must compete and beat the best teams in the world. We have a great deal of respect for what the top teams in this tournament have built, Mexico, Panama and the US teams have great programs and can see why they are ranked where they are in the world rankings.

Photo: Jari Turunen