The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Thursday, June 9, 2016 | 46 HALTON TRANSMISSION 559 SPEERS RD., #UNIT 3 905-842-0725 www.haltontransmission.com Kevin Nagel Sports Editor sports@oakvillebeaver.com Sports team, said Coyne, but the Eagles had their chances. "We outscored them in evenstrength goals," he said. "But (our) penalties and their power play was the difference." The Eagles seemed to have the bronze medal clinched with a 9-5 lead late in the third-place game, but a stick infraction put them a man down. McKinnon Park took advantage with three straight goals during the three-minute penalty, which continues no matter how many goals are scored. "And with stop time in field lacrosse (in the final quarter) that's an eternity," Coyne added. With only two players on the roster graduating (Jack Caldwell and Michael Hickey), Coyne said the team will be a force again next season when it moves up to AAA competition based on the school's population. Preliminary wins at OFSAA came over Austin, 8-4, and Owen Sound, 11-2. "Our attack, including Kevin Dong, Jackson Den Elzen and Justin Sykes, get their share of the goals but our midfielders got a bunch, too," he said. "Connected to your Community" on-line at www.insidehalton.com/ oakville-on-sports Jakob Nielsen (left) was one of nine medallists from Halton at the OFSAA tennis championships in Eagles gain OFSAA bronze in field lacrosse debut By Kevin Nagel Beaver sports editor Toronto. The Oakville Sr. B lacrosse Titans won their third game in a row with 11-1 decision Sunday King's Christian's 4x100-metre midget girls are all-Ontario gold medallists The Oakville Jr. B lacrosse Buzz host the Brampton Green Gaels Saturday, honouring the '06 title team in the process Not bad for a school in its first year of field lacrosse competition. The Abbey Park Eagles, with veteran coach Patrick Coyne in charge, won the Halton AA championship in convincing fashion (12-0 over Corpus Christi Longhorns) and added a bronze medal at the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations lacrosse festival, which wrapped up last week. The Eagles won two straight games to advance to the semifinals before losing 11-9 to topranked Holy Trinity from Courtice in the semifinals. A 9-8 victory over McKinnon Park gave Abbey Park the bronze medal. "We were told the competition would be very tough, including the top-ranked team in Canada in Holy Trinity," Coyne said of OFSAA. "The last two teams we played here were better than any AAA squads we've faced this year." Holy Trinity, which went on to win the gold medal, is a talented Abbey Park Eagles won a bronze medal at AA OFSAA field lacrosse last week in their first year of existence. | photo submitted Coyne said a major strength of the team is defence, anchored by Matthew Sykes. Ethan Cummings, Noah Gibson and Grade 9 player Matt Wright are the other longpoles on the team. Wright, in his first year of high school, "is a coach's dream," said Coyne, who says Wright will get an NCAA scholarship in the future "if that's what he wants." There were no worries in the Eagles' net with Oakville Jr. C Buzz goalie Evan Mason as the last line of defence. Midfielders Nick Hulbert and Jack Ricketts were keys for the team at both ends of the field. Coyne, an outside coach, said Dong deserves much of the credit for Abbey Park having a field lacrosse team. Dong, a Grade 11 student, found interest in starting a team at school, got the requisite teacher sponsor in assistant coach Sheila Gabura and convinced Coyne, who coaches Kevin's younger brother Chris, to come aboard. Other members of the Eagles included Michael Boushy, Pierce Burch, Curtis Douglas, Rahul Kaura, Gareth Mann and William McAllister. Holy Trinity finished second (2-1) in its division at AAA OFSAA and played for the fifth-place position on Day 3. Oakville Trafalgar rugby girls' first loss of season comes in OFSAA gold-medal game By Herb Garbutt Oakville Beaver sports staff There's one OFSAA ritual Melis Atalay won't miss -- the ice baths. Dunking yourself in a freezing tub of water to heal the bumps and bruises after a hard-fought game is just one of the perks of being one of the best rugby teams in the province. Atalay and her Oakville Trafalgar teammates have experienced their share of them after the Red Devils advanced to the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations girls' rugby final for the fourth time in five years. OT, looking to defend the OFSAA gold it won last year, faced J.F . Ross last Wednesday. Although the Red Devils had beaten every team that challenged them this season, it was the Guelph school that scored a pair of second-half tries to hand OT its first loss of the season, 27-19. "I'll never forget the feeling of winning OFSAA gold," Atalay said, "or losing," she quickly added. "There was such an amazing sense of support. Everyone's going through the same thing and there was so much empathy and comfort," she said. "You felt the pain of the person next to you. Everyone cares about everyone so much. I've played other sports but I've never felt the same kind of family connection as I did playing OT rugby." Oakville Trafalgar finished the season with a record of 22-1. Although that lone loss came in the provincial championship game, OT coach Dan Valley called this year's edition of the Red Devils "the most dominant team we've put out there." That's a pretty heavy endorsement for a program that has made nine straight OFSAA quarter-finals and won four medals and two provincial titles in the past five years. OT averaged more than 50 points a game, scoring more than 1,200 points this season, and boasted a deep lineup. The Red Devils' 16 tries at OFSAA were scored by nine different players, led by Taylor Black (five), Taylour Hurd (three) and Hannah Izzard (two). Atalay, Hannah Nasribeyqi, Thea White, Bridget Peros, Emma Hawkswell and Julia Demers also had tries. "I think it was a combination of the experience they brought back from last year's gold medal and the experience our athletes are able to pick up from being part of provincial or national programs or club teams," Valley said. "We like to build in-house, but any time they can get a ball in their hands and gain some experience, that adds a ton of value." That in-house building is responsible for getting many of OT's players on the field for the first time. Hailey Shouldice, a team captain, admits she "wasn't a huge fan" of rugby. But friends convinced her to try out in Grade 10. A week into practices, she was sold on the game. "Dan Valley made me fall in love with rugby. I would have never seen myself as a captain or being so emotionally invested in it," Shouldice said. "I was so proud to have a spot on a team with that much talent. It motivated me to work harder." Atalay also didn't play until Grade 10, when she moved to Oakville from the Netherlands. "If you told me in Grade 9 that I'd be playing rugby I would have laughed and called you crazy. I wouldn't have even considered it to be possible," Atalay said. At OFSAA, OT simply wore teams down. It outscored its first three opponents 2517 in the first half and 50-7 in the second half. J.F . Ross was the only team able to reverse that trend, scoring a pair of tries in the second half while limiting OT to just one. "Just like last year, it was a great game, back and forth up until the final minutes. Last year, we just happened to be on the other end," Valley said. "We had our opportunities to put points on the board but we didn't execute at the right times. We had three penalties within 22 metres and against a big, physical team, you give them a 10-metre headstart and they're going to convert." Even though most of the graduating seniors already had an OFSAA gold medal from last year, it wasn't any easier when their final high school game came to an end. "It was definitely very emotional. When the whistle went, I just dropped to my knees," Shouldice said. "Coming off winning last year, it was tough. I still get emotional thinking about it." With 27 of its 37 players returning, Oakville Trafalgar stands a good chance of making another run at OFSAA gold. That's little consolation for the graduating players who came up just short of closing their careers with another provincial gold. That's the kind of hurt even an ice bath won't numb. "It's hard when you put it in the context of trying to go back to back," Valley said. "Hopefully they're able to remove it from that and look at what they were able to achieve because it's pretty impressive."