Junior B Athletics eliminated in OT
It’s hard to imagine a more heartbreaking, gut-wrenching or dramatic way to be eliminated.
The St. Catharines WMKL Junior B Athletics dropped an 11-9 overtime decision to the Elora Mohawks Tuesday night at Canada Games Park to bring their season to a sudden and unexpected halt.
The A’s had designs on contending for a Founder’s Cup, but instead were swept by the Mohawks in three straight games in the Ontario Lacrosse Association best-of-five Western Conference final.
The A’s appeared to have locked up a win leading 9-7 with under a minute to play.
But the Mohawks scored with 20 seconds remaining to move to within one, then tied the game at 9-9 when Evan McDougall scored with only four seconds to play.
Elora then scored the only two goals of the 10-minute extra period.
“Credit to Elora, that’s a really good lacrosse team,” A’s coach Alec Tamas said. “They have a lot of depth. They’re a tough matchup. It was right there for us to take. Under a minute and then they come back and force overtime.”
The shocking loss left Tamas temporarily speechless.
“I walked in (the dressing room) and honestly had nothing prepared for them,” he said. “It wasn’t the outcome I was expecting. Right to the very last second I believed we were going to pull it out and come back and win this series.”
Once he collected his thoughts, Tamas was able to reflect on the loss.
“The message was you can work so hard for stuff, but sometimes in life even the guy who deserves it the most doesn’t always get it,” he said. “It’s a life lesson.”
The A’s put together a memorable regular season with an 18-1-1 record and then reeled off six straight wins in the playoffs before being eliminated.
“We had a group of 18-20 guys who came together and tried to accomplished a goal,” he said. “We accomplished a lot, broke a lot of records, we did a lot of things St. Catharines Junior B teams have never done before.
“We came up a little short but I’m proud of the work we put in to get here.”
Tamas is confident the organization will bounce back.
“I think we’ve established a really good culture here, a winning culture,” he said. “We show up, we work hard, we get better every single day so I expect that to continue going forward into next year.”
Following the game, the A’s shook hands with the Mohawks and then slowly made their way off the floor.
One of the last players to leave was graduating captain Jaden Patterson.
“The graduating guys . . . they’ve given it their all for three years,” Tamas said. “They deserved a lot better than that but sometimes that’s the way it goes. We don’t even get this far without them. We’re a totally different team without them. I’m proud of that whole group and the way they’ve conducted themselves. It’s been an honour to coach them the last three years.”
Owen Faris, Ben Smellie, Mike Napoli and Notah Hopkins are the other graduating players.
STATS PACK
Mohawks 11 A’s 9 OT
WMKL Player of the Game: Elora’s Evan McDougall with seven points.
St. Catharines Athletics: Jack Parker 3; Ian Kohut 2; Nate Watson, Cody MacNeil, Adam Ponting, Jaden Patterson.
Elora Mohawks: McDougall 3; JJ Lavigne 2; Brinley Wilson 2; Cole Hunsberger, Mark McIntosh, Owen Moore, Connor Wilmets.
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