Sunday, July 19, 2009

Cats Trail Series 2-0

This is in todays Morning Star Newspaper:

Cats trail series 2-0

Published: July 19, 2009

With the Thompson Okanagan Junior Lacrosse League championship series heating up, the Vernon Re/Max Tigers’ offence went cold Thursday night at Memorial Arena in Kamloops.
The Tigers lost 3-1 to the Kamloops Venom and went into Game 3 of the best-of-five series Saturday night at Wesbild Centre down 2-0. A fourth game, if required, would go Monday night in Kamloops. Game 5 would be played Wednesday night in Vernon.
The Tigers jumped out to a quick 1-0 lead in the opening few minutes on a breakaway beauty by Craig Bigsby.
After that, the Tigers’ defence went soft, allowing three straight goals by Ryan Hildebrand, Tyler Reid, and Steve Bordon.
“We played a poor game and couldn’t hit the net tonight,” said Tigers’ coach Rich Zecchel. “We had lots of trouble trying to break through Kamloops’ defensive zone and didn’t get very many good outside shots.
“Their goalie Stu Ford (36 saves) played well and we just couldn’t get anything past him. Even though our offence played poorly, our defence did play well, which was led by Joel McKenzie, Jake Soleway, Steve Kolasko, Ryan Oliverius, Blake Lewis, Russell McLean, and Joey Klein.
“Our goaltender Josh Phillips (40 saves) played a solid game and let in the least amount of goals he’s let in all year.”
The Tigers took 22 penalty minutes to the Venom’s six.
In what could be their final game of the season Saturday, Zecchel said: “We’re going to have to turn this ship around really quick. We should be up 2-0 in this series. It’s been really close and the games could have gone either way. Our big guns are going to have to put all the pressure they can on Ford and our defence will have to do their best to blank their top scorers, such as Riley Donahue.”

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