Athletics wrap up regular season with loss
Nathan Fehr doesn’t mind flying under the radar.
The 19-year-old defender for the St. Catharines WMKL Athletics has exactly one goal this season, but scoring isn’t what brings the Niagara Falls native job satisfaction.
“Honestly, the big satisfaction would be seeing my teammates score and keeping the score down low for the other team,” Fehr said. “Keeping them in single digits and helping our goalie put up a good stat line, that’s what brings us as a D corps that glory.”
Fehr’s contributions don’t go unnoticed by the Athletics.
“They do their job and they do it quietly,” A’s general manager Jeff Chcoski said of Fehr and his defensive partners. “If I’ve heard more than 15 words from him . . . he just comes here every night and works hard.
“He is a staple back there as far as toughness and grit and he still has two years left. He is someone who we will lean on in the next couple of years.”
Fehr said playing good defence takes more than just brawn.
“The biggest thing on defence is the communication with the guys,” he said. “Everyone has to trust each other. That’s a big thing because if you don’t trust the people beside you, then things start to fall apart and fall apart quickly.
“If you trust they’re going to have your back and have good communication, then typically you will be successful.”
Fehr played junior B lacrosse in Niagara-on-the-Lake before joining the A’s last season.
“Niagara-on-the-Lake was kind of a rival of St. Catharines growing up so I played against all of my teammates now,” he said. “I learned to love them.”
Fehr played AAA hockey for the Hamilton Bulldogs before hanging up his skates to concentrate on lacrosse. He also plays the field variety of lacrosse for the Brock Badgers, where he is majoring in forensic psychology but ultimately plans to be a firefighter.
“They do (translate) but they are also very different in their respective ways,” Fehr said when asked compare the two versions of the sport. “In box, it’s a lot more fast paced, more like hockey in that sense going back and forth whereas field is obviously a lot longer of a field and shot clock (80 seconds versus 30 seconds) and a lot slower of a game but still high scoring and high tempo.”
The A’s wrapped up their regular season schedule with a 7-4 loss to the Brampton Excelsiors Wednesday night at Canada Games Park.
Zackary Toll had two goals for the A’s while Keaton Zavitz and Carson Robins also scored.
Eric Ward and Bowie Horsman had two each for the Excelsiors while singles went to Darcy Thompson, Ethan Hawkins and Chris Dasilva.
St. Catharines finished the season with an 8-12 record and will qualify for the playoffs which will begin toward the latter half of next week.
“It’s something I planned from the start of the season,” Chcoski said of the extended layoff before the post season. “We had a rough stretch of four in five nights and I knew that was rough but the whole plan was always to put ourselves in a situation of rest leading into the playoffs. It was very thought out by myself and my assistant Sean Howe and after tonight there’s a good chance we won’t play until next Thursday.”
A’s acorns: A’s goaltender Oliver Vanyo was honoured before the game with the St. Catharines Double Blue Alumni Scholarship Award for a player entering his first year of post-secondary education.
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