They won’t need search and rescue to find a silver lining to being bounced from the big dance.
No, Okotoks minor lacrosse products Ryan McLean and Tom Fream walked away from their first kick at the Minto Cup national Junior A lacrosse championship with heads held high after a record-setting performance with the Calgary Mountaineers in Langley, B.C. last week.
“We went back and watched Game 1 of the Minto final and going into the arena was hard for us,” said McLean, a third-year Mounties defender. “But people are coming up to me saying ‘wow, congrats on what you guys did.’ It felt pretty good, what we were able to do as a team.
“We realized pretty quick that we took a big step for Alberta lacrosse.”
More like a giant leap.
Calgary became the first Alberta team to win a game out of province against B.C. or Ontario opposition at the Minto Cup since 1979 when it smoked the Delta Islanders 13-5 in its tournament opener.
For good measure they would throw in another breakthrough performance. The Mounties went on to edge the Ontario champion Orangeville Northmen 5-3 to advance to the semifinal round of the competition.
The rematch with the Northmen went the way of the six-time national winners by a 12-7 count.
A disallowed goal off the stick of Mounties lefty Lucas Claude led to a two-goal swing for Orangeville and marked a major turning point in the contest.
“That kind of crushed us and from there we never really battled back,” McLean said.
Debutants on the national stage, McLean, Fream and the rest of the Mounties players out of the back gate were buoyed by a commitment to team defence on the west coast.
“It was a lot easier playing defence because the whole team came together,” McLean added. “The communication was up, the overall teamwork. It was a lot easier to play better.”
The two Okotoks-area athletes are back with two seasons left of junior eligibility and the likelihood of increased roles on the back-end following the graduation of fifth-year defensive stalwarts in Jake Archdekin and Tony Tremblay.
Hoping you can do it and knowing so are two different things.
“I hope this gets me out there more,” McLean said. “Now that it’s realized it’s possible to beat them, I really want to win the Minto next year.”
Orangeville and the Coquitlam Adanacs went the distance in the Minto Cup best-of-five final with the hosts and B.C. powerhouses winning their first championship in six years in a 6-5 overtime thriller on Aug. 29.
For more information on the tournament go to bcjall.com/mintocup
