Lacrosse calls for Lemcke
He was sitting in his California hotel room a couple nights ago when his father called to offer congratulations. A few minutes before, he’d been selected in the fourth round of the National Lacrosse League draft and dad had started receiving way-to-go texts for his boy’s success. He thought he’d pass along his own verbal pat on the back.
At that moment, a stunned Justin Lemcke didn’t quite know what to say.
“I don’t even play lacrosse,” he says.
Remarkably, that’s true. Lemcke’s name will be familiar to folks around here as the recently-graduated captain of the Hamilton Bulldogs. He was the guy who lifted the championship trophy in the spring. He’s a hockey player. His dream had always been to be drafted by an NHL team.
So how did the 21-year-old end up becoming property of the Georgia Swarm instead of, say, the Toronto Maple Leafs?
Well, to be fair he has played lacrosse.
As a kid growing up in Whitby, he had no belief that he’d become a hockey player. Not at any real level. Nobody pumped his tires and told him he’d be going anywhere in that game. In fact, when he was 14 or 15 he went to a Belleville Bulls playoff game with his father and decided it was beyond him.
“There’s no way I can play at this pace,” he remembers telling his dad.
Lacrosse, on the other hand, was his game. A few years later he’d be on Team Ontario and score 52 points in nine games at the national tournament. Double what the guy in second place scored. Even as a young teen his talent on the floor was obvious.
To his surprise, however, he was taken in the first round of the 2013 Ontario Hockey League draft, 18th overall. By Belleville.
That was a twist for sure. Yet here’s where the story gets weird.
The general manager and coach who drafted him was George Burnett. He happened to live in Whitby, somewhere near the arena where Lemcke played both hockey and lacrosse.
Worried that Burnett might wander into the rink at some point during the off-season, see him playing another contact sport and get upset at him — Canada’s summertime sport isn’t exactly genteel and injuries do happen — Lemcke became the only player on his team to ask that his last name not be on the back of his sweater. And if anyone asked, he wasn’t doing interviews.
Did he think this secret life would work?
“I dunno,” he laughs. “I don’t even know what my thinking was.”
He eventually quit. Wanting to give hockey his full attention and not wanting to risk an injury that could screw up his big-picture dreams, he didn’t play the next year. Or the year after. But when he didn’t hear his name called in the NHL draft he started wondering why he wasn’t playing lacrosse anymore.
If hockey wasn’t going to love him, why shouldn’t he play?
He called his old coach, joined the team — now as a defender — and played most of the next two seasons. At least until Bulldogs general manager Steve Staios started hearing rumours he was planning to bolt for an American scholarship.
Which is when Lemcke quit for good.
“Cold turkey,” he says. “I just told the coach I had to focus on hockey.”
That was the spring of 2017. He really hasn’t touched a lacrosse stick since. Today the Mickey Renaud Captain’s Trophy winner from last season is at training camp for the American Hockey League’s Bakersfield Condors with a likely destination of the ECHL’s Wichita Thunder. He says it’s been going well. He hasn’t felt out of place and has been pleasantly surprised that they jump from the O to the A hasn’t been as substantial as he thought it might be.
Still, hockey is his life now. He only even knew the NLL draft was happening because he saw an online picture of a buddy who was there. So the call from dad that he’d been selected by a pro lacrosse team after not playing the game for two seasons — and only playing in two of the past five seasons — was a stunner.
The two had a good laugh about it.
“I think it’s really cool,” he says. “At the same time, it doesn’t make much sense.”
The day after the draft, he got an email from the Swarm. He says he got back to them and let them know where he was and what he was doing. The next day he got another note asking them what number he wants.
Someday this may matter. Someday he may decide to drop hockey, go to school, get his business degree and play lacrosse on the side. It’s a weekend league so that’s not a stretch. But at this moment, he sent the team a note back.
With thanks for drafting him, but ...
“I’m playing hockey right now.”