This is in todays Morning Star Newspaper:The Vernon Re/Max Tigers have booked their spot in the Thompson Okanagan Junior Lacrosse League’s championship series.
Thanks to a convincing 10-4 win over the South Okanagan Flames Wednesday night before 350 fans at Wesbild Centre, the Cats have a chance to earn their first trophy since 2003, when they beat the Kelowna Dragons.
The Tigers will face either the fifth-place Kamloops Venom or first-place Kelowna Warriors, depending on who wins their semifinal series. Kelowna won Game 1 Tuesday night 8-5. The best-of-three final series will likely start Monday night.
In regular-season play, Kelowna won the series over the Tigers 2-0, while Vernon beat Kamloops 2-0.
“It feels real good to be finally playing in the finals again,” said Tigers’ coach Rich Zecchel. “We got this far by playing the Flames hard and Rutland before them.
“We came out with a great start tonight with no penalties, but we kind of let our discipline get the better of us come the third period, as a couple of our most experienced players took some dumb penalties and got themselves thrown out of the game. As a result of that, we’ll have to work hard on making sure those penalties don’t happen again.”
The Tigers, who took 53 minutes in penalties, compared to the Flames’ 14, played a convincing first period where they scored four straight goals in 90 seconds to pull away with a 5-2 lead after the first.
Steven Clark, Robbie Short, Ryan Landels, and Craig Bigsby scored the Tigers’ quick string of goals.
Jordan Jarvis, Riley Soleway, Miles Jespersen, James Dobrowolski (empty-netter), Clark (on a nifty breakaway in the late going) and Landels, with his second goal of the game, rounded out the rest of the Tigers’ scoring.
Wes Norris, Darcy Ricard, Pete McEwen and Tyler Prentice led the Flames’ attack.
The Tigers lost veteran Braidy Webb in the first period due to penalty trouble, and Short, midway through the third, after his fifth penalty.
Vernon goalie Josh Phillips, who made 35 solid saves to take first-star honours, is excited to be playing in his first championship series.
“I’m really excited I got to play tonight and be the starting goalie for the Tigers this year,” said Phillips. “The game went pretty good tonight but things got a little intense when our team started taking some untimely penalties and the Flames had a lot of opportunities with the man-advantage to score on me.
“Other than that though, we came out with the desire to win from the beginning and played a pretty decent game.”
Flames’ head coach Geoff Goodman was impressed with the way his troops played this season.
“We finished second in standings this year which is by far the best we’ve ever done. I’m really proud of the way the boys played this season. We were just simply outplayed by Vernon this series. Vernon’s a very strong team with good coaching and players.
“It was mental mistakes tonight that cost us the win. Many times some of our guys just stood around while the Vernon players ran around them and our guys didn’t do anything. It’s a tough way to learn but next year we’ll learn from our mistakes so that we don’t make them again.”
No comments:
Post a Comment