Oct. 12, 2008
by Andrew Scurria, Special to Lacrosse Magazine Online
PHILADELPHIA - Drexel men's lacrosse coach Chris Bates started taking an interest in the quality of Canadian lacrosse players a few years ago, and he says that the difference between then and now is "night and day."
"You're seeing more athletes, you're seeing better coaches, and you're seeing college graduates coming back [to Canada] and passing it along," he said.
Bates got to see the latest version of some of the best Canada has to offer Saturday, when the Dragons faced the Ontario Under-19 All-Stars in a fall-ball exhibition at Vidas Field. Drexel won, 14-9, in a game that was closer than the score indicated.
"[Canada]'s a very fertile ground," said Bates, who had two Canadians (Kyle Bergman, rising sophomore, and Andrew Chapman, graduated) on his 2008 roster and will add another next year. "There are guys that obviously can play; they've grown up with a stick in their hand, playing indoor since they were 4, 5 years old."
Canadian players grow up playing box lacrosse, a smaller version of the outdoor game played on a hockey rink with six players to a side. And Bates said that certain college programs might be inclined to look for an international flair more than others.
"If you watch us, we run kind of a hybrid box offense, and we look for that skill set," he said.
"We start developing our off hand a lot later," said Michael Thomas, an Ontario All-Star midfielder who is currently doing a post-grad year before playing for Colgate in 2010. "It seems like every time we come down here, the Americans are a lot faster. We just have a little more inside game."
Saturday's matchup was a reflection of that. Drexel did its best to turn the game into a track meet and score quickly, while Ontario proved superior at executing its interior passes and moving through traffic.
The Ontario All-Stars also met Division III Cortland on Sunday.
Dave Sutterfield, who coached the Ontario team, said the tour would help prepare the players for the Brogden Cup, an annual event that the team will participate in later this year.
Usually, the Cup features an all-star team from Maryland and Ontario and is played over the summer. But this year, Adidas sponsorship has changed the dynamics. Now, the winner of the Adidas National Challenge earns the American spot in the Cup. Rochester won that tournament over the summer, beating a Baltimore private school all-star team, and will face the Ontario team in Orlando starting Dec. 5.
"That's made it a bigger recruiting thing for both," Sutterfield said. "But the Americans are athletes first, and that's probably what hurts us the most."
Calling all Canucks
Few college coaches were in attendance Saturday. Mike Edwards, an assistant at D-III Salisbury, said that budgetary restrictions meant that games like this were one of the few chances he could get to see international players. "There are some [Canadian] clubs that will come down and play, but not enough," Bates said. "They need more exposure to get college coaches to see them, because there are a lot of them."
Cockertons, Palmer opt out
Brothers Matt and Mark Cockerton, the Canadian attackers who are headed to Virginia next year and are the sons of former N.C. State great Stan Cockerton, did not accept invitations to participate in the two-game tour. Neither did Zach Palmer, an attacker from the Hill Academy in Ontario who will enroll at Johns Hopkins next year.
Sutterfield said that players who commit to colleges early were sometimes not as motivated to play at international events, but that he was not upset about it. "Obviously the committed ones are the better players, the ones who are going to help our team, but the bottom line is to get exposure," he said.
It's still hockey country
So where does lacrosse fit into the high school sports scene in Canada, anyway? "At my high school, it's pretty big," Thomas said. "But the thing is, high school sports in Canada are not quite as big as in America. A lot of guys player major junior hockey ... So a lot of the [best] guys really don't take high school sports that seriously, because a lot of our premier athletes are hockey players."
