Northmen eliminate Athletics
An unexpectedly volatile season came to an end for the St. Catharines WMKL Athletics Saturday night.
The A’s dropped a 13-8 decision to the Orangeville Northmen and were eliminated from the Ontario Junior Lacrosse League semifinal playoffs.
The Northmen swept the best-of-five series 3-0 and now advance to play the Mimico Mountaineers in the OJLL finals. The winner will move on to the Minto Cup in Coquitlam, B.C.
The A’s rebounded from a 1-9 start to finish the regular season at 10-10 (two losses versus Toronto were overturned due to roster violations) and performed well in ousting Burlington in the quarter-finals.
“I think it’s been a roller coaster ride of a year,” St. Catharines general manager Jeff Chcoski said. “Burlington was a really good team too and we wanted to get out of there (with the series win). I think it’s going to be the third year in a row we lose to the national champions (Burlington, Whitby). They are a real good team.”
The A’s hung with the Northmen for 40 minutes, leading 8-7 heading into the third period where Orangeville scored six unanswered goals.
“I knew it was going to be the longest 35 minutes of my life and it turned out to be,” Chcoski said. “I don’t know if we ran out of gas. It just felt like they were able to take it to another level where we weren’t able to get to that next level. We competed all game long. It was back and forth. If we scored, they got one right back. We were just never able to pull away.”
Ari Steenhuis, Julian Race, Thunder Hill, Colton Armitage, Tye Steenhuis and Keaton Zavitz and Zack Toll scored for the A’s.
The A’s will host the Minto Cup next year and lose only Race, Hill and Christian Lefeuvre from this year’s team.
“Obviously going into a national championship year I’m going to have to tweak some things and figure out what we need,” Chcoski said. “I’ll take the next few weeks to reflect and then start back at it with (assistant general manager) Sean Howe and start planning. We have a pretty good idea what our needs are to win a national championship but it’s easy sit it down and write it on paper, it’s harder to get it done.”
The A’s have stockpiled draft picks for next season.
“Just like I did a few years ago when we won the Ontario championship, I’ve planned the last couple of year to fill the cupboard up to be able to make the moves when I have to,” Chcoski said.
Chcoski and the staff had a brief meeting following Saturday night’s game and are already formulating plans for next season.
“I think (assistant coach) Ian Rubel made a good point in that this isn’t something we can start in June, this is something that starts next week,” Chcoski said. “Getting physically prepared and putting in the time now, not six months from now. I think if you go back over a lot of our games, we started slow a lot of times and it all comes down to starting slow getting ready for the season, starting slow to start a game. That’s the small stuff you have to do to be able to compete night in and night out and put the numbers we’ll have to put up to get through next year.”
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