Pro lacrosse coming to St. Catharines
Local lacrosse fans will be in for a first Saturday, Nov. 16 when the defending National Lacrosse League champion Buffalo Bandits square off against the Las Vegas Desert Dogs in a pre-season showdown at the Meridian Centre in St. Catharines.
Proceeds from the event will support the 2025 Minto Cup Organizing Committee for the hosting of the Junior A National Championship taking place at the Meridian Centre in August of 2025.
“This was kind of an idea that I just had been sitting in my head for a long time about just continuing to have local events,” Minto Cup co-chair Dan Pilon said. “There’s never been an NLL pre-season game in St. Catharines and I’m just really hoping people take advantage for it. I mean, the key as well for us was, if we were gonna charge it, we wanted to keep the tickets ridiculously low ($10) because we were more interested in having hopefully 5,000 people in that place, screaming and cheering on the teams, than we were making a bigger buck off of it.
“We really want to support and show what we’re capable of doing from a lacrosse side and supporting from a lacrosse side in the community in St. Catharines.”
Pilon, who is Head of Scouting and Video Analytics for the Desert Dogs, said the team is looking forward to the game.
“I do know the players are fired up too. We had a first week at camp down in Vegas this weekend and a lot of conversations about it because when we play games, they’re used to playing them in front of either nobody because they’re not allowed in or a couple of team staff. They’re fired up to have a pre-season game where there’s a lot of people still working hard to make a team and you might have 4,000 or 5,000 people sitting there screaming and cheering and trying to make it a real environment.”
Brian York, Director of Economic Development and Government Relations for the City of St. Catharines, feels the event is a natural.
“Lacrosse has been woven into the very fabric of our community, and we are thrilled to host a professional game here for the first time in the history of both the venue and the city,” he said.
Those sentiments were echoed by Paul Coates, President of the St. Catharines Junior Athletics and co-chair of the 2025 Minto Cup Organizing Committee.
“We’re truly thankful for the partnership between Las Vegas and Buffalo that has allowed this to take place, and we trust we can get the best of all worlds on the 16th – a great lacrosse game, with local players, and a full arena to kick-start the process of hosting the 2025 Minto Cup here in St. Catharines.”
In addition to the game, lacrosse camps will take place on the day of the game – free of charge – run by players from both the Buffalo Bandits and Las Vegas Desert Dogs.
So far, Pilon said 3,000 tickets have been sold to the venue which seats 5,300.
As well, a charitable contribution will be made to St. Catharines mayor Mat Siscoe’s SCORE Golf Charity.
“We’re just kind of heading into that Christmas season where we can hopefully take proceeds and hand them out to a good charity as well,” Pilon said. “So between the two of them, we think it’s a really good space to help set us up for 2025 for the Minto and also help hopefully set up some people in the community for a better holiday season.”
Pilon said the game will be a trial run for the Minto Cup.
“We thought we need to get the turf down on that facility at some point before the Minto,” he said. “Does it fit perfectly? Does it work?”
There are a number of local connections, with former Athletics on each roster including Steve Priolo, Matt Vinc, Tom Whitty and Jackson Webster. Behind the bench, Vegas head coach and general manager Shawn Williams is a member of the Brock Badgers Hall of Fame, with current and former Athletics coaches Ken Millin and Eric Vinc behind the bench for Vegas and Buffalo as well.
“His (Williams) wife’s from here, so he spends a ton of time here. He was really supportive of the idea and the concept to chase down,” Pilon said.
Pilon said work on the 2025 Minto Cup is well underway.
“We have projections around what that budget looks like,” Pilon said. “It’s not insignificant. So we have some beneficial items that we’ve had to date. The city’s provided us with some significant in-time use of the Meridian Center, which is big from that side. And we have a couple of other grants that we’re chasing down, but it’s a budget that’s in the hundreds of thousands, not the tens. So it’s a big budget to have to cover and it’s a lot of work.”
https://www.ticketmaster.ca/event/1000614A98AC1863
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