“Underachieved.” That’s how junior A Miners head coach AJ Jomha summed up his team’s Rocky Mountain Lacrosse League season.
The Miners played their final game of the regular schedule against the Edmonton Eclipse at home on Wednesday night. With an 11-10 loss to Edmonton, it was a disappointing finish to the season.
Jomha said that their biggest challenge of the night didn’t come from the Eclipse, it was “a team that didn’t come prepared to play.”
In many ways, Wednesday night’s game that began with a dismal first period for the Miners and saw them come back too late bears a resemblance to the season they had.
The Miners had a terrible first period, being outscored 5-1 by Edmonton, but a faster and more focused St. Albert squad emerged in the second and third periods. Unfortunately for the young team, in this league showing-up late doesn’t win games.
“You know, the fact that we came back – to me – means very little,” said Jomha. “Because all that tells me is that had we come here to play, this game would have been in our hands early in the game.”
Tom Buckley had two goals and three assists against the Eclipse. Buckley said he and his teammates need to focus on playing all three periods in the post-season.
“Just playing a full game. Definitely need to work on playing a full game.” He said. “I don’t think we put a full game together this whole season, so we’ll do that and hopefully we can pull together in the playoffs.”
The Miners concluded their 2012 Junior A season in last place with just three wins and 14 losses. Competition in the league is fierce and St. Albert will need to be at their best to go the distance in the playoffs.
“I mean in this league, if you’re not on the top of your game, on any given night, any of these teams will beat you,” said Jomha.
When the players get it right, as they did when they scored three goals within two minutes in the third period, the Miners are a strong team. Jomha said that he sees flashes of brilliance from his crew at times, but it’s the amount of bad decisions that hurt them.
“I think we’re one of the faster teams in the league and we’re going to get opportunities, but you know if we give the ball away in the first 10 seconds, that hurts us,” he said.
The head coach said that heading into the playoffs, defensively they need to communicate more.
“And then offensively, it’s more about moving our feet and better execution. I don’t think we’ve executed very well in the last little while, not as well as I know we can.”
Tom Buckley knows the team has work to do, but he is feeling positive as they head into post-season competition.
“I mean, we didn’t have a great season, but we showed what we can do in some games and definitely in this third period, so we’ll just build off that and it’ll come together. We know we can win so it’ll be good.”
The Miners’ coaching staff will continue to stress to their young players the importance of coming to games prepared to play.
“I think the message is that, you know, they need to know how good they can be, and they’ll never do that unless they really come prepared to make that commitment,” said Jomha. “I think that’s going to be the message.”
