On the Road with Jamison - Victoria BC

Last weekend, I had my first great experience in the Victoria islands of British Columbia, Canada. A place I would have never thought to venture became reality recently when I was invited to join a team that went by the name Kavu Lovers to play in the Victoria Summer Slam. What an awesome place to have a Lacrosse tournament north of the border in the summer time. It’s a beautiful land with great views, crazy people and some pretty good Lacrosse too.

Every now and then you go visit a place and don’t realize what just happened until you’re on the way back. So many new people, places to go and things to see can make time fly when you’re away. This past Friday afternoon my buddy Andrew Vincent (Mercer Island and University of Oregon alum) and I made the beautiful trip to the Canadian Border in Blaine, WA. With us were Andrew's former Teammates from Oregon Josh and Paul Swanson who is also Mercer Island alum. We had a great ride up except for the fact we weren’t able to make the 5pm ferry that crosses through the islands eventually unloading upon Victoria BC. We had to wait on line for the ferry almost 6 hours, but somehow managed to pass the time.

Due to the delay, we missed our first game that Friday night which was scheduled for 8pm but arrived at the hotel in time for some relaxation. Did I say hotel? This place was no hotel, more like an animal house resort. There were three bars on the lobby level, a night club underneath us in the basement, and a beach volleyball bar/patio off of the third story roof. Needless to say, we had a plethora of options to meet and socialize during our downtime.

The next morning we received an unexpected, earlier than anticipated wakeup knock on the door. It was the man himself, non other then THE, Dejon Hush. He is the Bainbridge Island coach and was basically the man behind the operation this weekend, playing, coaching, organizing, collecting, dispensing and everything else in between. He was there to inform us that our 11:30am game got switched to 10:30am. Only an hour difference I know, but that is a lot when you’re playing three games in one day.

Playing the make-up game from the previous night came and went as we beat an older group of men fairly swiftly and for most, we were able to get a couple good runs in. We had plenty of numbers all week so finding fresh legs never really became an issue. The second game was a little more challenging mainly due to the slow start we had in the first half. Starting slow, eventually finding our rhythm and playing solid possession lacrosse in the second half seemed to be a reoccurring theme and a pattern for our squad. This was especially true in our final game on Saturday. It was a late game with all the other teams having finished up and migrating to the beer gardens. None the less, we won all three games on Saturday putting the Kavu Lovers in a position to play for the championship game on Sunday.

The competition was fairly good all week. We saw a lot of talented players including some Canadian legends like Brian Alexander and Billy Marachek. Two guys that have been playing the game for a long time, always represented their country well and have a tremendous amount of respect in the lacrosse community. For those of you who are not that familiar with the “box” or indoor lacrosse game, it is a huge thing in Canada. I mean, if you grow up and you’re not playing Hockey in the off season, you’re on the concrete in the same rink playing lacrosse. It is a slower paced more half field game with much more of an emphasis on stick skills rather than athletic ability. When these “box” players get outside in a field game situation they try to slow the game pace down, get in your head and try to make you play their game taking you out of yours. That coupled with the fact that some of the Canadian players didn’t like Americans made for a very interesting final day. The fist team we played in the Semi finals was not prepared to play on that day. Over 60% of them had showed up late, with little to no equipment and some players not even there. To top it off, the weather had gotten worse and was now at a steady down fall. Again, we started out slow but managed to find our rhythm and finished the game with 5 straight goals to advance to the final @ 1pm.

So here we were, soaking wet, tired, hungry and ready to end the tournament. We had won all 4 of our previous games but knew full well the caliber of talent that we would face in the finals. A solid team comprised of mainly middle aged NLL or professional indoor players, led by Lewis Ratcliff. An indoor star for the Toronto Rock and a current member of the MLL franchise San Francisco Dragons. We hung tough for the first half and were able to keep it close in the third. Then eventually and seemingly against what our MO had been all week, we fell apart. For some reason we kept losing possessions, throwing the ball away and missing key opportunities. The other team took what we gave them and ran with it, literally. Scoring the last 7 goals of the game they came away with a convincing win and assured us it was time to leave.

All in all I had a great time and loved playing with the group of players we had. I’m still fairly new to the area of Seattle having only moved here two months ago, so it was nice for me to meet and hang out with some more people my own age making some connections. I was impressed by the level of play and found out that I myself have a long way to go on the road to playing competitively again. I will most certainly be looking forward to playing there again next year along with the Kavu Lovers and took away a lot of memories from my time there.