DL: Oh it certainly is. We set the goal going into the weekend that we were going to win both our games and come away with the provincial banner, and the boys executed the game plan. They were a couple of tough games, it wasn't easy, we knew we'd have to work hard and be on top of our game, and we were, and got the result we were looking for Sunday afternoon.
CS: Just go through the two games, who you played, and how things went.
DL: Saturday morning we played Assiniboia in the semi-final. We started out a little slow, a little road rust, we hadn't played in a couple weeks, so our team was rusty, we weren't moving the ball around very well in the first 20-30 minutes and we fell behind. The last 10 minutes of the third period we had to work, we were down 12-8 to Assiniboia and we came back and tied the game, with 41 seconds left Jordan Jarvis scored a short-handed goal for us to force overtime. We almost lost it in the last 10 seconds when Assiniboia was awarded a penalty shot, but Travis Buckle made a big save to keep it tied. We played a 10 minute overtime period, and we scored twice to go on to the championship final.
CS: And in that final, a couple guys really stepped up. Grant Risling had 4 goals, 3 assists, and Jordan Jarvis who led the league in scoring had 2 goals and 4 assists, so I'm sure they were a big part of it.
DL: Yeah they really came to play. I can't say enough about the way Grant Risling played on Sunday afternoon, he really wanted it. All the guys wanted it, but Grant just brought it to the next level, I've never seen him play a game like that, he was tremendous for us, and everybody else followed Grant's example and to a man they all played and achieved their goal.
CS: You and I did an interview before the season started, and I think you were a little disappointed about last year, but you were excited, because you returned a lot of guys, you were young last year, and you must have reached a lot of the goals if not all the goals you set.
DL: Yeah, we set goals at the start of the season, we knew we had a young team but a lot of experience coming back, guys who had played in the league for 2 or 3 years. We wanted to win 5 regular season games, and we did. We wanted to make the playoffs and compete. We got into the playoffs, but come playoff time we looked at it and we re-evaluated our goal and it was to win that Tier 2 Championship, and everybody bought in to what we were trying to do and they went forward and achieved their goal.
CS: And you're still pretty young, I don't think you lose too many guys heading into next year either.
DL: No, we won't lose anybody due to age, there's a possibility we could lose a player here or there to a higher level of lacrosse, whether it be the Rocky Mountain league in Alberta or the B.C. Junior League, it's a possibility, Jordan Jarvis has attracted some interest from some of those higher level teams, so that could happen. But if everything falls into place we could return all of our players next year, which is very exciting.
(Bulldogs logo courtesy http://www.yorktonbulldogs.com/)
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