A’s close season with penalty-filled loss
Steve Toll is an emotional coach.
Everyone in lacrosse circles across the country — if not, North America — knows that.
Saturday night, minutes after his current Ontario Lacrosse Association junior A team, the St. Catharines Athletics, dropped a 9-7 decision to his former team, the Mimico Mountaineers, Toll’s emotions were running high.
“It’s getting carried away with the reffing,” said Toll, the Athletics all-time leading scorer and former 16-year pro lacrosse player. “I had a manager from Mimico come up to me and tell me this is the worst-reffed year in 26 years he’s been involved in junior lacrosse.
“It carried on tonight, believe me, it was absolutely awful.”
Ninety-four minutes in penalties were called as the A’s were playing without five regulars and lost Kealon Pilon early in the game due to injury.
“The rule today from the officials was no off-ball slash, and if they called off-ball slashing today there would have been 400
penalties to 400 penalties,” Toll said. “It’s getting to a point where they’re going to actually lose kids to lacrosse because too many kids are going to continue to get injured in this debacle of refereeing.”
The good news, St. Catharines went 5-for-11 on the power play as Alex Simmons led the way with one goal and five assists.
Jeff Wittig chipped in with four goals and one helper.
The Athletics wrapped up their regular season with a 13-7 record, good for third place in the standings, and they found out Sunday night who their firstround playoff opponent will be. They do know it’s either Mimico or the Six Nations Arrows.
Asked if Saturday’s road game
against the Mountaineers was a possible first-round playoff preview, Toll offered this:
“Either way it’s going to be rough, and it’s going to be a long series, if refereeing is going to be like that.”
St. Catharines will host games 1, 3 and, if necessary, 5 in the a best-of-series beginning 8 p.m. Wednesday at Jack Gatecliff Arena.
The Mimico Mountaineers finished their regular season with an 11-9 record.
The Six Nations Arrows, 10-9, entered their final game of the season Sunday night visiting the 8-11 Kitchener-Waterloo Braves, and they have the tie-breaker over Mimico.
An Arrows win will pit Six Nations against St. Catharines in the opening round, with a loss to the Braves setting the stage for an A’s-Mountaineers matchup.
A’s Acorns: Latrell Harris, Tom Whitty, Teddy Leggett, Jake McNabb and Brett Erskine were the Athletics regulars not dressed … Harris will miss at least the first round of the playoffs as he’s off to represent Team Canada at the World Field Lacrosse Championships in Israel … Niagara IceDogs defenceman Liam Ham returned to the A’s lineup for the first time since the opening game of the season and had three points on one goal and two assists … Kyler Kilgour dropped the gloves with Braydon Cresswell in the third period.