Not sure who, if anyone, picked the goalie rotation for this game, but it was a fortuitous choice. Justin showed up at the last minute and looked shaky in the opening minutes. Team Blair was up by 4 in the first 10 minutes and Gord was stopping everything Team Joe could throw at him. It wasn’t until the 13 minute mark before Team Joe finally found the back of the net. Both teams settled down to some real lacrosse with Gordon scoring a very late goal to make it 5-2 after 1. Austin got this one back seconds into the 2nd and Team Joe was pushing hard and closing one goal at a time – Low scored just before the goalie switch to close the score to 6-5 and a pretty Low to Austin passing play tied it up shortly after the switch. But that was to be as close as Team Joe was going to get – Vlemmix with 3 straight and Platt with a nice long ball catch and goal opened up the game to make it 10-6 for Team Blair heading into the last few minutes. Low and Austin with a couple of goals made it tense but Platt with a close in goal closed out the scoring – Team Blair up 11-8, 3 minutes to go. Somebody is going to have to explain to me this Team Blair strategy of taking last minute unforced penalties – leading by 3 in a tight game, Van Slyke takes an unsportsmanlike penalty with 3 minutes to go – this could get interesting……but, the penalty shot was denied by Gord and Team Blair ran out the clock to win the coveted EveryWinnerHasToGetSomethingChampionOfTheLosersRound Bronze Award (Girl’s Lax Bobblehead version).
Final score Team Blair 11 – Team Joe 8. Celebrations were cut short and Team Blair was encouraged to leave the floor as the marquee gold medal game was about to start……