Athletics advance to semifinal
The St. Catharines Athletics came through in the clutch.
With their season on the line and likely needing to win all four games this weekend at the Toronto Rock’s practice facility in Oakville, the A’s ran the table to finish the Ontario Junior Lacrosse League regular season with a 6-2 record.
The A’s began the final weekend of regular season action with a 6-5 win over Burlington and a 6-4 triumph over Brampton Saturday. Sunday, the A’s topped Kitchener-Waterloo 15-6 and then put an exclamation point on the day with a convincing 9-4 win over Six Nations.
“I can’t put into words how proud I am of these guys how they pulled it together for this weekend,” A’s general manager Jeff Chcoski said. “The job the coaching staff did was second to none, our training staff with Bob McLaren is so professional, and our organization from top to bottom did an amazing job.
“I can’t say enough for everybody involved. We knew what we needed to do and knew it was going to be tough but they put it together.”
The A’s attempted to stay in the moment and not worry about what was up next.
“If we didn’t take care of Burlington off the hop, we knew we were going to put ourselves in a real tough spot,” Chcoski said. “We had a real tough game there and the same thing with Brampton. These were one-and two-goal games and they were battles.”
The A’s placed first in the Western Conference with a 6-2 mark while Brampton was second with same record. The A’s defeated Brampton twice thereby earning first place.
Whitby placed first in the East at 7-1 while Mimico was second at 5-3.
The A’s will take on Mimico in one semifinal Saturday, Aug. 7 while Brampton and Whitby face off in the other. Start times are to be determined.
The winners will meet Sunday at 8 p.m. for the Ontario championship.
The final was originally slated for Saturday night.
“They decided to switch it because as GMs and governors we decided it wasn’t fair to the kids,” Chcoski said. “We want that championship game to be the best performance.”
The Young Guns portion of the tournament is also slated for next weekend beginning Friday.
Alex Simmons paced the A’s in the eight games with six goals and 28 assists for 34 points followed by Carter Zavitz (11-13-24), Brayden Mayea (10-12-22), Sam LeClair (13-7-20), Kealan Pilon (3-14-17), Liam Ham (9-5-14) and Jackson Webster (3-6-9).
Cam McLeod played all eight games in goal and fashioned a 5.38 goals-against average.
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