These players were so chill they froze out the competition.
Chilly Willy Lacrosse, an Island-based elite travelling team comprised of players throughout the province, won the recent U.S. Box Lacrosse Nationals in San Jose, California.
Chilly Willy went undefeated, beating the PenaLax All-Stars from Pennsylvania 9-1 in the Bantam ‘A’ championship final.
“The other team got tired in the third period and we took over,” said Chilly Willy head coach Brian Spaven.
“Our transition and defence was really good and our goalkeeper, Adam Bland, had the best save percentage in the tournament. Other coaches said it was nice to watch us move the ball around.”
Also featuring Midget ‘A’ and high school elite squads, the 80-team tournament was largest box-lacrosse jamboree in the U.S. and featured travel teams from B.C., Ontario, California, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Georgia, Minnesota, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
“The complex is amazing, with three turf and two sports floors,” Spaven said.
“Box lacrosse in really taking off in the U.S.”
But it’s still field that is the dominant version of the game in the U.S., especially in the collegiate NCAA, and Chilly Willy plays that, too. These 14- and 15-year-old players are on the fast track to NCAA athletic scholarships in field lacrosse and the NLL pro game in the box version of the sport. Spaven predicted the Chilly Willy players are the ones fans are going to see in four years as freshmen in the NCAA and playing Junior ‘A’ in box lacrosse en route to the NLL and WLA.
Spaven is a veteran mentor whose career has spanned guiding the B.C. team, led by superstar Victoria twins Gary and Paul Gait, to gold at the 1985 Canada Summer Games to coaching the Island team to the gold medal at the 2016 B.C. Summer Games in Abbotsford.
Chilly Willy is comprised of seven players from Juan de Fuca — Bland, Logan Wright, Evan Law, Riley Hawes, Jake Obee, Brodie Wade and Isaac Swan — along with four players from Coquitlam, and two each from New Westminster, Delta, Mission and Kamloops.
The waiting list to get on the team is 85 players.
The players play against each other in provincial playddowns, with Spaven’s Juan de Fuca Whalers the back-to-back B.C. Bantam ‘A’ champions. Then, the best of them unite in common cause on the Chilly Willy travel team.
Spaven plans to keep coaching Chilly Willy and move up with these players through Midget, taking them next year to identification camps in Denver and the eastern U.S..
Chilly Willy won two of the Bantam field-lacrosse tournaments it participated in this season in the U.S. In the third one, Chilly Willy came second to the Denver Elites team when moving up to play in the 15-16 age class in the big Las Vegas field-lacrosse tournament.
