With the way the Sask Lacrosse U17 provincial championship started for the Moose Jaw Mustangs this weekend, it would have been easy to write the local crew off after their first two games.
Back-to-back round-robin losses to the Regina Snipers and Weyburn Thrashers had the Mustangs sitting last in their round-robin pool and a single loss away from elimination.
But you don’t put together the kind of winning campaign the Mustangs had this season without having all sorts of resiliency -- and sure enough, they’d find a way to get the job done.
The Mustangs took an 11-3 win over the Swift Current Rampage in the quarter-final on Saturday morning, battled to a 5-4 win over the Snipers in the semifinal and rolled to a 9-3 victory over the Weyburn Thrashers in the gold medal game Sunday afternoon.
“After starting 0-2, I told the kids ‘reset button’ (Saturday) morning and we just needed to keep winning,” said Mustangs coach Chris Flanagan. “They’re a strong group, and at the end of the day if you’re strong mentally, strong physically and strong emotionally, you have two choices, sink or swim. They could grab some weights and sink to the bottom or they could put their best-looking shorts on and swim to the championship.
“And in the end, the whole team bought in. I’m extremely proud of how resilient we were to come back and win like we did after losing the first two… It was hard, though, I have too many grey hairs already and I gained some more this weekend, but I’m extremely happy for this group, they deserve it.”
The Mustangs left absolutely nothing to chance in the gold medal game, taking a 5-0 lead out of the first period, leading 6-0 early in the second and going into cruise control through to the final buzzer.
It was a far cry from the battle they ended up with against Weyburn in the round robin, where the Thrashers would hang on for an 8-7 win.
“I told the team beforehand, somebody has to win the game, and if you don’t win, you’re not a loser, you're somebody who learned a lesson,” Flanagan said. “They didn’t need to learn a lesson, they’d learned enough lessons this year and it was Weyburn’s turn to learn a lesson, so go and play your heart out.
“They sure did that, coming out strong, and it makes it a lot easier to win a game when you have a lead, which we didn’t have a lot of all weekend..”
A balanced attack helped make the diference. Brodyn Pladson led the way with a hat trick, but four players -- Ryder Gilroy, Sam Wilson, Cooper Bruce and Ethan Nordii -- all had a goal and two assists. Chase McKee and Lachlan Clark added a goal and an assist each, while Colton Flanagan turned in a stellar showing in goal, stopping more than 40 shots.
The provincial title caps off a practically perfect season for the Mustangs, which included a South Sask Lacrosse League championship two weekends ago and the Calgary Canada Day Tournament banner last weekend.
“We had our sights set on winning playoffs, which we did, winning Calgary, which we did, and our main goal was winning provincials, and now we’ve done that,” Flanagan said. “It’s a great experience for these kids to work together like they did all season, and to have this kind of success. I couldn’t be happier for them.”
