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Junior C Northmen claim provincial championship Meredith Cup

August 18, 2022   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

The entire Junior C season came down to one game for both the Orangeville Northmen and the Clarington Shamrox when they arrived at Tony Rose arena for game seven of their best-of-seven Meredith Cup provincial championship.

It was a tough, well played series that saw the Northmen take an early 2-0 lead.

Clarington battled hard and won the next two games to tie the series.

The Shamrox took the lead on August 8, when they won game five by a score of 9-7 on the Northmen home floor.

The series was again tied when the Northmen travelled to Clarington and won 7-4 in game six on August 10, to force the series to go to the final game to decide the provincial champions.

In the final game, Clarington scored early for a 2-0 lead.

The Northmen got on the scoreboard when they scored at 7:04 into the first period, then tied it up with just over eight minutes left in the period. They scored again with just under two minutes remaining to make it a 3-2 game.

It was a 5-2 game when Orangeville scored twice at the midway mark in the second period.

The Shamrox scored to close the gap but the Northmen notched two more.

The second period ended with Orangeville leading 7-6 and the entire season coming down to a final third period battle to see who could get the edge.

The Northmen were leading 9-6 with 12 minutes left on the clock. A final goal with 3:03 remaining in the game gave Orangeville some insurance and they held on for a 10-6 win.

“From the very beginning I told the guys it was going to be a battle all season,” said Northmen head coach, Drew Barfoot after the win. “We started the season with ten guys and in our first game we got absolutely smoked. We came through and battled adversity – we have 12 guys injured right now. We went up 2-0 in this series and we thought we had it, but they came back. I have to give that to them. Tonight, we went down 2-0 early but the boys held it together and showed what they had, and we brought that out with a win. We got a nice roll during the season.”

Barfoot added, “We got a couple of guys back from the ‘B’ team that helped us out. Then we started rolling and our defence started picking up and our goalies played stellar and once that got going our offence found their groove, and once we started scoring it was game over for everybody else.”

It was a stellar season for the fledgling Orangeville Junior C team who were formed two years ago but couldn’t play due to the pandemic and the league shutting down.

They finished the regular season in second place in the West Division with a 14-3-1 record and 29 points.

This is the first time in the Ontario Lacrosse Association’s history that a Junior C team has won a championship in their inaugural season.

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