The Wallaceburg red Devils are moving to the second round of the Ontario Junior ‘B’ Lacrosse League playoffs.
Wallaceburg defeated the Hamilton Bengals 8-5 on Monday, July 2, in the do-or-die Game #5 at Wallaceburg Memorial Arena.
“The boys worked hard all year,” Justin Durston, coach for the Red Devils, told the Sydenham Current following the game.
“We worked hard the last couple of years on this. It was a really big character win for us. We went down there (on Sunday) and obviously we couldn’t close it out. Coming home, we didn’t want to do that, but we were excited to play in front of our fans. We play really well here.”
Durston added: “I thought we were confident coming in, but we’re just preparing ourselves for the next series now. Our eyes are on the prize.”
MacCoy Abrams led the charge for Wallaceburg with 3 goals on Monday.
Sidney Powless, Marshall Powless, Jordan Goddard, Cory Lucier and Blain Adams also scored for the Devils, who out-shot Hamilton in the deciding game, 56-47.
Brayden Bell made 42 saves for the victory.
Wallaceburg is waiting to see who they face in the next series.
If the Orangeville Northmen beat the Windsor Clippers on Tuesday night in their deciding Game #5, Wallaceburg will face Elora. If Windsor wins, the Devils will battle Six Nations.
“We’re going to stick to our own plan, we don’t want to prepare for anybody,” Durston said.
“We play a team game, our system is all team. Our defence is a team defence, our offence is a team offence. If we work on and perfect the things that we want to do, then it will make other teams adjust for us and that’s what we wanted.”
A total of 436 people packed into the arena for Game #5 on Monday.
Here are some photos from the game:
