VS
Minto Cup Preview
Lacrosse Is On A Roll
Growth, Pro league and website traffic threaten
the Anonymity of Canada's National Summer Sport
Aug 28, 1999
When Paul Dal Monte returns to the Iroquois Park Sports Complex in
Whitby this weekend, he can help the Burnaby Lakers with a challenge
no other Junior "A" lacrosse team from British Columbia has accomplished
in twenty-two years: win a national championship in Ontario.
Dal Monte, a member of the summer fraternity of Canada's other national
sport, should possess a keen insight on what it takes to win. He was
there as a player last time it happened, against the same franchise, in
the same arena. Today, as Laker Co-coach, he remembers that 1977 moment.
"We were down two games in the series and then won four straight to win
it all. It was unbelievable and definitely an experience I will never
forget."
The Minto Cup lacrosse championship of Canada opens Saturday when Dal
Monte's Lakers face the hometown Whitby Warriors in a best of seven
final series. While the teams are the real story of this championship,
so is the growth of the game itself. Lacrosse, men's and women's, box and
field, has become so popular as a youth sport that its status in the
Canadian sports landscape is changing.
"Lacrosse has been on an upswing for the past six years in British
Columbia" says Jim Hagen, Executive Director of the British Columbia
Lacrosse Association (BCLA). Hagen attributes the increased popularity
of the sport, in part, to weekly regional television coverage. "With
increased TV exposure, lacrosse has reestablished its place in the
sporting fabric of many communities here. Vancouver Island and the
interior of British Columbia have exploded with interest in the game."
In Ontario, the only sport to eclipse the growth rate of lacrosse in the
1990s is women's ice hockey. "We've had tremendous growth this decade"
says Tom Peters, Director of Membership Services for the Ontario
Lacrosse Association (OLA). According to Peters, "Many ex-players who
are now fathers are introducing their kids to the game". Registrations
in the province have doubled since 1990 to approximately 20,000 members
this year.
With such growth comes the issue of organization communication. Peters
and a team of volunteers up-date the OLA website, which will average
10,000 daily page views during the next month (up from fewer than 250
daily pageviews two years ago) so fans can track scores, stats and game
reports from national championship events. The site even has sponsors
with banner advertising.
Sharon Hrinco, past OLA Vice President of Administration also credits
the Toronto Rock with the most recent surge in registration numbers.
In the spring, the professional lacrosse entry captured the championship
of the seven-team National Lacrosse League at a soldout Maple Leaf
Gardens. Along the way, the Rock brought aggressive promotion, local
newspaper coverage and live television feeds of home games on CTV Sportsnet
with the play-by-play voice of Events Requiring Hype, Joe Bowen. The
Rock converted thousands of Toronto sports fans into lacrosse fanatics.
To the benefit of growth prospects in Ontario, the championship game
of the U.S.-based league featured almost exclusively Canadian line-ups
(for both teams) and placed lacrosse on the sports radar of a city
which had historically ignored the game.
The National Lacrosse League means top players in the BCLA summer league
like Paul and Gary Gait, Chris Gill, Russ Heard, Dan Stroup and Colin
Doyle, enjoy new found celebrity status as the subject of promotional
poster campaigns and lacrosse trading cards.
While pro lacrosse is a likely destination for the top Junior "A"
players, what makes this Minto Cup unique is the backgrounds of the
teams involved; teams so good, their quality of play promises to advance
a championship almost as old as the country to new heights.
Both teams transformed from good to great during the past several
seasons having learned from the lessons of failure. The Lakers were
summarily dispatched back to the runway by Whitby two years ago in
the '97 Minto. Since that experience, the Burnaby regular season and
playoff record is 69-3-0, including a single loss 1998 season. As defending
Minto Cup champs and after recruiting players from Alberta and Ontario,
this year was more of the same, despite losing their team captain,
Cam Sedgwick, mid-season to a torn ACL.
Groomed for Minto success since the Pee Wee age level by lacrosse
coaching legend Jim Bishop, Whitby dropped just two games this season
(31-2-0) after being eliminated from 1998 playoff contention in the OLA
semi-finals. Their greatest loss last season however, was Bishop
himself, who was killed in a motor vehicle accident in the fall. Bob
Hanna, a retired school principal and Hall of Fame player under Bishop,
continues the tradition of great motivators behind the Whitby bench.
Also in the Warrior line-up are two of the premier players in the Junior
"A" game today, team captain Gavin Prout and goaltender Gee Nash.
"This is going to be a great series," says OLA President Chuck Miller.
"I think the Burnaby advantage is that they out-recruited everybody. For
Whitby, it's that they played in a more competitive league this season."
"The real challenge for us" as Dal Monte sees it, "will be to remain
disciplined and focused in spite of all of the potential obstacles and
distractions. Players spend up to ten days in an environment totally out
of sync with their normal daily routine. They sleep in an unfamiliar
bed, eat restaurant food, play in front of hostile fans in an unfamiliar
arena with referees whose interpretation of the rules may be somewhat
challenging to accept. We will need to be on top of every facet of our
game in order to compete."
Ultimately, the cleansing power of disappointment has re-united these
two clubs and presented the game with yet another opportunity to ratchet
up its profile nationally. With lacrosse on a roll, fans envision a time
when Canadians might soon refer to hockey as our other national sport.