New season, new look, for Northmen field lacrosse

April 2, 2014 · 0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart – There may not be a real correlation between looking good and playing well, but if you’re going to go out on the field as a team, you might as well look good while you play.

Orangeville Northmen Field Lacrosse players will have a new look this season with re-designed uniforms featuring a graduated gray / black design, with the Northmen logo on the shoulder patch and the town’s name on the other shoulder.

“The last six years we’ve had a really dull uniform. It didn’t have our team name on it, it didn’t have Orangeville’s name on it,” Explained Kent Cotton, vice president of men’s field lacrosse with the Northmen. “These are a lot flashier. The players have been complaining about the look of the previous uniforms. It also announces our corporate sponsorship – Sanderson Source for Sports in Orangeville. We haven’t had a sponsor for the team for the last six years. Sanderson’s has stepped up and sponsored all the teams.”

The field lacrosse season gets underway on April 12.

The Northmen field six teams in the Spring session in the Ontario Minor Field Lacrosse League, then also enter two teams in a smaller privately run Fall session.

The Fall session has a smaller number of players as the season conflicts with the start of hockey season and many lacrosse players switch to the ice when the lacrosse season ends.

This season the Northmen will have one Tyke, one Novice, two Peewee, one Bantam, and one Midget team entered in competition.

Due to the lack of a turf field locally, the field lacrosse program play all their games at other centres.

“The ‘A’ teams are playing out of Brampton this year. All the other teams, they can travel to Mississauga, to Toronto, to Kitchener, Guelph, and sometimes St. Catherines,” Cotton said. “You need turf fields. I don’t think we’re even allowed on the fields in Orangeville until after May 16, and the season is over on the May 24, weekend.”

The move to the turf fields was a result of delays in League play if fields were soggy or just not playable. And this used to happen frequently.

“Our League used to be all on grass,” Cotton said. “They decided there was too any cancellations and too many last minute changes because Kitchener would pull the field on us on a Thursday night because it rained and the fields were no good. Now they’ve gone exclusively to turf fields. We play at the University of Waterloo, the University of Guelph, and the fields down by the Hershey Centre (in Mississauga). There’s about ten fields there.”

There’s another ten fields in Brampton the League uses.

Around 130 Orangeville Field Lacrosse players are registered with the Northmen for this year and will start the 2014 season in less than two weeks.

With the new uniforms, a first place finish isn’t guaranteed – they will still have to work hard for that – but it does guarantee they will look good when they go out onto the field for their first game of the season.