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Jr. A Northmen season nixed, lacrosse cancelled Ontario-wide

June 12, 2020   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

There won’t be any Junior A lacrosse in Ontario this year.

The Ontario Junior A Lacrosse League has cancelled the entire season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This follows the announcement from the Canadian Lacrosse Association that the 2020 Minto Cup will not be held.

This year’s Minto Cup – the national Junior A championship – was to be held in St. Catharines, Ontario.

St. Catharines has now been moved up and named the host city for 2021 when, hopefully, the next season gets underway.

The OJALL issued a statement announcing the cancellation of the season on May 28.

“After much thought and consideration, very regrettably, the OJALL board of governors announces the cancellation of the 2020 season. Following the announcements of the CLA, cancelling the Minto Cup, our board of governors felt the safety of all participants within our league needs to be our first priority.”

The League consulted with teams around the province before making the decision.

The statement went on to say: “The decision was made in consultation with every club and was based on recommendations from public health experts. It was made in effort to guarantee the health and safety of our athletes, coaches, officials, support staff and volunteers. Other considerations for the board’s decision included access to consistent and safe facilities in all of our local communities. The board also considered having adequate time for our athletes to be able to prepare and train safely for the physical demands of a season in our top-level league.”

The decision came as a disappointment to both teams and fans alike. However, given the current situation, coaches and players realize the decision did not come lightly and was a necessary response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The OJALL is considered the top and most competitive junior box lacrosse league in the world.

The schedule usually gets underway in the first week of May and wraps up in the second week of July, before heading into the playoffs.

Teams play a 20 game regular season to find their final position in the standings.

The schedule had originally been delayed to May 15, with the League reserving the right to make a new decision at that time.

The championship club from Ontario goes on to the Minto Cup – the national championship tournament for Junior A teams in Canada.

“There’s definitely not going to be any lacrosse in 2020, at least at the Junior level,” said Orangeville Junior A Northmen GM / head coach, Bruce Codd. “In kids’ lacrosse there may be some opportunities to get out there and get some training in. That would be the first step. There may be a chance to do some modified game play. For the Juniors I don’t think there’s a lot we can do.”

Codd said he was hoping that the season would still be able to get underway, but concedes in the end, it was the right decision.

“I was a bit of an optimist,” Codd said. “I thought things would calm down. But the more you think about it, I think it was a sound decision, especially factoring in that people would have been coming from B.C. and Alberta, There’s just so many parts to it all. As disappointing as it was, I think it was the smart decision given that we don’t know where things are going to land with the Corona virus.”

With the season cancelled, there are many graduating players who are being robbed of their final season of lacrosse. Graduating players may see their final year as eligible junior players evaporate.

Codd said he is hoping there is some leeway given to those players so they can stick around for another season.

“Our league is in favour of the players getting another year. It’s going to be a while until that gets figured out. It’s their last year so we hope things work out for everybody. At the end of the day it’s got to make sense for everybody.”

Northmen players have been keeping busy doing dry land training to stay in shape, but they are limited in actual lacrosse training as players have not been allowed to meet for practice.

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