When the Six Nations Arrows Express comes West, watch out.
The Ontario Lacrosse Association junior A lacrosse champions won their third-ever Minto Cup following a 14-8 victory over the Coquitlam Adanacs in Game 6 of the best-of-seven national junior lacrosse championship final in Langley on Saturday.
All three of Six Nation’s Canadian Lacrosse Association national titles have come in competitions held in British Columbia.
The last time was in 2007 when the Arrows defeated the five-time Minto champion Burnaby Lakers 19-8 in a winner-take-all single game final at Queen’s Park Arena.
That surprisingly one-sided matchup before a national television audience marked the final game the storied junior Lakers would play in the Minto after 12 consecutive seasons in the national championship tournament.
It was also the first time current Six Nations runner Brendan Bomberry, the Arrows’ star in Game 5 of the Minto, experienced a Minto Cup up close.
In 2007, Bomberry was a ball boy for the 2007 Six Nations’ national championship club.
“I can’t really remember, but (I remember) the leaders really pushed the guys to make it happen,” Bomberry said following this season’s Six Nations’ equally emphatic four-game turnaround after falling behind 2-0 to Coquitlam early in the series.
“(This season) I remember that leadership is what drove us to get to this point and it definitely paid off.”
Bomberry, a five-year Arrows’ junior who finished seventh with 19 points in overall Minto Cup scoring, including three goals and two assists in last Thursday’s 12-7 win over the A’s, said the team never got down on itself despite dropping the opening two games of the Minto to the West Coast champs.
The Arrows responded in Game 3 with a head-spinning 19-5 win – outscoring the junior A’s 7-2 in the first period, 8-3 in the second and 4-0 in the final frame – that must have left shock waves in the Coquitlam dressing room for the remainder of the series.
In the following three games of the series, Six Nations served up at least one big, single-period score to wrestle away a third championship banner in the remaining games.
In Game 4, it came in a 5-1 middle period sparked by a hat trick by Six Nation’s goal-scoring leader Josh Johnson, who topped the Minto Cup with 15 markers.
In Game 5, the Arrows broke a 7-7 tie wide open in the final frame with Bomberry’s hatty.
The end came for the Adanacs in Game 6 in the final period as well, as the Arrows fired eight goals past the Adanacs’ keepers, including the eventual game-winning goal by Haodais Marracle, his second of the series, midway through the third frame.
“We always have an answer. We came out wanting to make a statement to the whole Canadian Lacrosse Association. That’s what he had to do and that’s what we did,” said Bombery.
Minto Cup MVP Johnny Powless led all scorers with eight goals and 21 assists.
Six Nations keeper Doug Jamieson recorded the Minto win in goal, playing all but 28 minutes of the series and posting a Minto Cup best .846 save percentage.
“If you want to win this, you can’t shut down for a minute,” Bomberry said.
