The Sunshine Coast bantam Rapids lacrosse team found a silver lining to their season last weekend in Victoria, capturing a silver medal at the 2014 provincial championships.
After mowing down the competition throughout the regular season with a perfect 19-0 record, the Rapids along with the Quesnel Wildfire, who also entered the championship with a perfect record, were the clear favourties.
That proved to be the case as both teams went through the round robin with perfect 4-0 records with the Rapids earning wins against West Kootenay (8-4), Abbotsford (4-1), Cowichan Valley (5-2) and Cowichan Valley again (5-2).
The Rapids and Wildfire met in the championship final, with Quesnel prevailing 8-2.
Grayson Bush was awarded with a warrior fair play award for the tournament.
Overall, the Rapids finished with a record of 22-1, not bad at all considering many of the players were playing their first year of lacrosse and the rest of the team their first season in the bantam division.
“This is the best finish ever for a bantam team in our association,” said president Pam Service. “No one expected this team to do as well as they did. But this was truly a team in the full sense of the word. They are all great friends and just gel really well with one another. Marcus Brejak, the head coach, and Chad Joe, the assistant coach, did a fabulous job. The players really respected both coaches and gave their hearts out every time they went on the floor. The final was a great game. Both teams played hard. It was the best gold medal game you could ask for.”
And this could be just the start of the post-season hardware for the local association as the peewee Rapids are in Richmond this weekend for their provincial championship. The peewees just missed out on a medal last year as they finished fourth in Kamloops.
