Wet weather doesn’t dampen Trent Excalibur lacrosse playoff win; team off to nationals

The Trent Excalibur men’s lacrosse team clinched a spot in the Baggataway Cup on Saturday afternoon.

Playing in steady rain, the Excalibur took a hard fought 6-4 win from the Queen’s Gaels in a Canadian University Field Lacrosse Association opening round playoff game at Justin Chiu Stadium.

The game was tied 1-1 after the first quarter and 2-2 at halftime. Trent went ahead 5-4 in the third quarter and scored the lone goal of the fourth quarter with 90 seconds remaining.

The Excalibur (9-3) will face the Guelph Gryphons in the Baggataway Cup quarterfinal on Friday at 6 p.m. at McGill University in Montreal. The winner will face the West Division champion Brock Badgers, who earned a bye to the semifinals, Saturday at 11 a.m. The other quarterfinal pits the Western Mustangs against the Nipissing Lakers. The winner will face the East Division champion McGill in the other semifinal. The gold-medal game is Sunday afternoon.

Adam Kitchen led the Excalibur with a hat trick while Cole Hanrahan, Garrett Eddy and Nic Andreoli also scored. The Excalibur were missing Nick Chaykowsky, who was at NLL training camp.

Excalibur coach Mark Farthing said the rain affected play.

“We would have liked to pass and catch a little bit better than we did, but other than that when push came to shove we were there and showed up,” he said. “Our defence needed to hold them while we got our offence together, and they did. We shut them down in the second half and they only got one shot in the fourth quarter when they needed a goal the most.

“When we needed our offence to show up, they put the ball in the back of the net. When we needed them to kill off time at the end of the game, they milked off the final five minutes. In a game that was about winning, that’s all you can ask for.”

Farthing said it was good preparation for next weekend.

“Queen’s is a good team and played us tight in the regular season and played McGill tight,” he said. “We knew we’d get in a battle but we also knew we had battlers on our team. That’s what we were looking for. Hopefully, we’ll get into three more battles next weekend.”

In OUA volleyball Friday at the Trent Athletics Centre, the University of Toronto Blues swept the Excalibur men’s and women’s teams in straight sets.