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Orangeville Jr. A Northmen in a waiting game for start of new season

April 9, 2020   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

With the start of the 2020 Junior A lacrosse season scheduled to get underway just over a month from now, it is now doubtful that fans will see the Orangeville Northmen, or any other Junior A club, on the arena floor any time soon.

The regular season normally gets underway during the first week of May and wraps up in the second week of July ,before heading into the playoffs.

“Our first scheduled game was May 15,” said Northmen Junior A general manager, Bruce Codd. “But obviously with everything going on that’s not going to be the case. We’re not even sure if we’re going to have a season at this point. Everything is at a standstill right now. Ontario Lacrosse has postponed all live events until May 15, and then they’ll review it – like everything else. Nobody knows what to expect from day to day. There will be no sanctioned lacrosse in the province until at least May 15.”

The Junior A league normally plays a 20 game regular season before heading into the playoffs.

Club executives can not meet for discussions, and try-outs for this season are on hold.

The possibility of a shortened regular season or prolonging the season into later in the summer is on the table.

“We’re going to have some discussions on creating different scenarios,” Codd said. “Honestly, nobody really knows what anything looks like right now. We would have quite a few returning players coming back. We’ve had some discussion, but having a discussion verses being in a live setting is totally different.”

Once the sanctions are lifted, the Northmen can start tryouts but that will be ‘accelerated compared to a normal one’.

Even if the league wants to push the season back, they may not be able to do so.

There are different teams and municipalities to consider, and many venues go into hockey mode late in the summer.

“We could try shortening the playoffs and different things like that. There’s going to be a lot of different scenarios thrown out there to get the season in if we are able to. There’s a lot of challenges. There’s so many moving parts to this.”

Codd has taken over general manger duties on the team this year but stressed that the Club executive have been working together over the past several seasons. Codd also maintains his position as head coach.

“The one thing about us is we’ve done everything by committee for the last few years,” Codd explained. “With myself, Josh Sanderson, Nick Rose, Bob (Cleveley, former G.M.), we’ve had a really good management crew for the last few years. I can’t stress enough how we all share these tasks.”

With the League and pretty much every other sport in the country on hold, the team just has to play a waiting game and see how it all shakes out.

“Ontario Lacrosse has put out a statement that there is no lacrosse activity right now,” Codd said. “Everybody is just hoping we get through this thing. The biggest thing right now is making sure everybody is safe and obviously playing lacrosse wouldn’t do that. Our big thing is making sure our players and our staff are taking care of themselves. That’s what it’s all about right now. We want to make sure we don’t rush back and put anyone into jeopardy. That’s first and foremost.”

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