Two local lacrosse stars are looking to extend a winning heritage this month.
Fresh off Alberta’s first ever gold medal at the box lacrosse Midget boys nationals Okotoks Raiders Mattias Flammenspeck and Ethan Landymore have moved up to national standing as members of Canada’s U17 entry at the Heritage Cup in Hamilton.
“It means a lot,” Landymore said. “It doesn’t really happen to a lot of people.”
The 2017 Heritage Cup runs Oct. 21 in Hamilton. Team Canada battles the Iroquois Nationals. In conjunction with the U17 game, the Heritage Cup also sees Canada and the United States clash at the senior men’s level.
The U17 team was picked largely on performances from the midget national tournament in August.
“The experience alone is fantastic,” Landymore said. “You get to play with the best people in all of Canada and then we get to experience professional level with Team Canada and the U.S.”
Both young athletes are far from surprise members of the squad.
Landymore captained Alberta to gold at the 2017 Midget boys nationals and was a dominant player in club play with the HOKS.
Flammenspeck, a Grade 10 student, has considerable pedigree at the national level having been named the MVP of the Bantam boys national tournament in 2016.
“It will be great,” Landymore said. “(Flammenspeck) is a year younger so he will get this experience possibly again next year if they do it. To share it with him in my last year is really good, it’s really good to share it with all the boys from Team Alberta.”
There will be a few of those in Ontario.
Reflecting Alberta’s rise in box lacrosse, eight of the 20 members of the squad hail from the wildrose province.
“I had a good feeling a couple Alberta players would be making this team,” Landymore said. “We had a really strong team with really strong players and winning nationals helped it a lot.
“There is eight Alberta and nine from Ontario and it’s really great to hear that Alberta is getting up there in Canadian lacrosse.”
Team Canada’s coaching staff features four graduates of the NLL including head coach Josh Sanderson and former Okotoks Jr. A Raiders bench boss Bruce Codd.
“They’ll feel very honoured and excited to play in this game,” Sanderson said in a Lacrosse Canada press release. “It’s unique, one game, but we’re trying to build internationally at a younger age. As we move forward, we envision that someday at the men’s worlds there will be a junior division.
“We’ll have quite a few kids from Ontario on the team because it’ll be close to home but Alberta has some strong kids and there’s some good ones from British Columbia, too.”
For more information on the tournament go to lacrosse.ca
