Excalibur off to cup berth
Overtime victory against Bishops takes Trent to Baggataway Cup Nov. 3-5 at Queen’s
Normally the play-in game for the Baggataway Cup isn’t this hard for the No. 2 seed.
The Trent Excalibur men’s lacrosse team overcame a two-goal fourth-quarter deficit to beat the Bishops Gaiters 12-11 in overtime at Justin Chiu Stadium on a cool Saturday night.
Trent (10-2) finished second in the Canadian University Field Lacrosse Association East Division. Usually that means a match with the fifth seed for one of two spots in the six-team Baggataway Cup Nov. 3-5 at Queen’s University. But with Queen’s (4-8) getting a berth as hosts and first-place McGill (111) getting a bye, it left the second and third place teams to battle for the last spot. Although Trent had beaten Bishops (9-3) twice in the regular season only one win separated them.
What resulted was a nail-biter with the teams exchanging leads several times. Bishops took a 10-8 lead to the fourth quarter. Garrett Eddy and Adam Kitchen scored 2:40 apart to tie it with 15:20 left. Eric Mawdsley’s third goal restored Bishops’ lead 2:42 later. Nick Karam scored with 6:41 left forcing two four-minute overtime periods.
Fifth-year Trent player Lyman Beatty, a defensive midfielder, scored his first goal of the season, set up by Eddy, for the lone overtime tally. It puts Trent into the quarter-final match-up against the Guelph Gryphons on Friday. The Excalibur won a silver medal last year losing to Western in the final.
“All week during practice we worked on overtime stuff,” said Kitchen, a Peterborough native who scored three goals. “We knew it was going to be a tough game. Bishops is a great team. We just came to work. We knew we were going to win from the start but that it wasn’t going to be easy.”
“This might have been one of the toughest play-in games in CUFLA,” Trent head coach Geoff McKinley said. “Usually you’re getting a different match-up playing against five. We knew what we were in for. They’re well coached and invested and they play a good team game.”
McKinley said the overtime practice helped.
“When we got there our guys were calm. They knew what to do and were all on the same page,” he said.
It was nice to see Beatty emerge as an unlikely hero, said McKinley.
“He found a role in his third year playing middie-D which most guys don’t want to do,” McKInley said. “He really embraced it. He put up a lot of points last year and he’s more than capable but we asked him to play a role. He saw an opportunity and he was able to bury it. I’m happy for him.”
Bishops coach Rob Engelken didn’t mince words with his thoughts on the playoff format.
“Our league has a screwed up set-up with Queen’s getting the bye,” he said. “We’ve beaten them twice this year and instead we have to come here and play a game like this. Not that any of the teams are easier but I’d have preferred somebody else.”
Engelken said turnovers and penalties down the stretch cost his team.
“We put ourselves in a position to be where we wanted to be. We knew we could play with them if we did our things properly and then down the stretch we shot ourselves in the foot a couple too many times. You can’t do that against a team that has the talent they have,” he said.
Eddy also scored three times for Trent while Jeff Fernandes, Travis Szabolcs, Dan Michel, Courtland Black-Araujo.
Xavier Perron also scored a hat trick for Bishops while Devlin Kauffeldt, Harrison Jones, Cam Bateman, Samuel Firth and Taren Cook added singles.
Bob Heron is the 2017 inductee into the Peterborough Horseshoe Club’s Hall of Fame.
Heron was officially recognized at the club’s annual awards banquet on Oct. 13. The presentation of a PHC Hall Of Fame ring was made by Mark Million.
Heron started playing horseshoes in 1955 and joined the club approximately 40 years later. As a member of The Peterborough Horseshoe Club for the past 40 years, he has organized and run many tournaments and encouraged many players young and old to play the game, according to his induction announcement.
Heron was the Horseshoe Ontario Regional Zone 3 Rep for 25 years, president of the Peterborough Horseshoe Club for two years, grounds chairman for 15 plus years, publicity director and trustee for 12 years.
He has also organized and run winter indoor horseshoes and Wednesday afternoon retirees leagues for many years and assisted in raising money and prizes for local get togethers and events.
Last year, he was given the honour of being inducted into the Ontario Horseshoe Hall Of Fame. His many championships and accomplishments are only outdone by his dedication and endless contribution to the sport at the local, Ontario, Canadian and world level, stated the announcement.