A group of kids in Wallaceburg is doing something that no other lacrosse team has ever done in Wallaceburg history.
“We are the first team from Wallaceburg to make the qualifiers,” said Todd Knight, head coach of the Wallaceburg Griffins bantam lacrosse team.
“It’s the top 16 teams from Ontario that qualify for a two week play down. You play seven games.”
Knight said at the beginning of the year he wanted to bring someone in to push the kids and teach them a little extra.
“So I brought Joel Shepley in and Joel has been awesome. He’s all heart about Lacrosse. So what my thought was, because we won Peewee ‘B’ two years ago, lets challenge these kids. Lets put them into ‘A’ tournaments.”
Knight said he managed to get the boys in a big tournament in Brampton earlier in the season, which really showed that the boys from Wallaceburg could compete with anyone.
“We went down there with a zero rating because we hadn’t been to a tournament and we tied Whitby right off the bat,” Knight said. “They were ranked third in Ontario and we tied them 8-8. I thought ‘Okay, things are looking good here.’ Our second game was against Guelph who was rated number one in Ontario and shockingly, we upset them. We played the host Brampton team and we blew them out of the water. I thought, okay these are all ‘A’ teams and we are really competing. Then we tied Clarington and that was probably our weakest game of the whole tournament.”
Knight said in the semi-finals they played Orangeville and we were down 5-2 with about eight minutes left.
“We tied it up with about 30 seconds left to put it in overtime and Hunter Santsche scored in overtime. That put us up against Oakville, who are ranked #1 now, but they were ranked #2 at the time.”
Knight said the team was up 2-1 after the first period in the championship, but Oakville ended up prevailing in the end.
“We just ran out of legs,” Knight said, adding that the teams showing was at the tournament was amazing.
“That’s one of the biggest ‘A’ tournaments in Ontario for bantam, so to get the silver with a team of 15 kids that register for Wallaceburg Lacrosse, its almost unheard of,” Knight said.
So far in the province-wide qualifier, the bantams have a 1-2 record. They have lost to Whitby in a heartbreaker, 2-1, they have fallen to Peterborough and they beat Six Nations.
The team will be heading to Oakville from August 7-9 to play the final four games of the qualifier.
“We have to play Guelph again, Brampton again, Clarington again and Halton Hills who we don’t really know much about.”
Knight said he has a great group of kids on the team
“I got Tanner Cole, he’s having a great season. Some injury set backs kind of hurt him right now but him and Tyler Davis, Cole MacKinnon, Riley Roe, Lucas Jacobs in net. He’s the bomb. When he is on his game he might be one of the best in Ontario. I got a bunch of smaller kids. We are pretty much out sized every game but a lot of my kids, out of 15, I think 10 of them are 2nd year Bantam so that really helps with the experience.”
Knight added: “I want to mention the hard work they put in. We practice once a week and usually I find out if the kids are busy and if they are not we are over at the tennis courts Saturday and Sunday. We put a lot of time in. I mean they run, they don’t walk anywhere on the floor because they know the consequences.”
Knight said the team has some work to do to make the top six.
“It has been an awesome year so far, but we pretty much are going to have to pull off three wins when we go back up (to Oakville.) If we get three wins I think that will solidify us into the top six. I’m not really sure where the top six will be played at yet, but that will be the six best teams in Ontario competing for the gold medal and the Ontario title.”
