The St. Albert Midget A Rams came up short in their playoff series, falling to the Parkland Posse with a final score of 5-1 on Wednesday.
After forcing game seven on Tuesday night with a 6-3 win over the Posse, the home team wasn’t able to pick up another win at the Go Auto Arena in St. Albert. Coach Martin Gautier said that coming off Tuesday's victory, they had the right momentum going into the final playoff game.
“We thought that we had the momentum, but the other team did a good job to get the momentum back,” Gautier said.
In a score rarely seen in a lacrosse game, the Rams were able to only net one goal on what player Alex Sorochan called a “hot” goalie for the visitors, who faced 40 shots from the Rams. The Posse were able to net five goals out of their 44 shots in the game.
The only goal was scored for the Rams in the first period by Jackson Ganton from Mathieu Gautier and Jace Simmington-Lesanko. The home team was shut out for the second and third periods.
“For us to just score one goal in the game, we don’t see that very often. We were the highest-scoring team all season,” Gautier said.
The Rams came into playoffs after a successful regular season performance.
The squad finished first in the league with 15 wins, six losses and one tie, earning them 31 points in the standings. The Posse finished behind the Rams with 27 points from 13 wins, seven losses and one tie.
They also managed to rack up 185 goals over the entire season, which is almost 20 more than the second-place Posse.
Gautier owes all the success of the season to great leadership on the team and the players understanding their roles well.
“Everybody is willing to pay the price for their teammate so they were willing to go to war for each other. They were a really tight team,” Gautier said.
During the season the two teams faced off nine times, with the Rams taking four games and the Posse coming out on top four times and one tie between the two teams.
Despite their regular-season success, the Rams couldn’t crack the Posse in one of the final meetings of the season.
“I think we played a little bit individually. We didn’t play as good as a team as we did all season. When they found themselves behind, instead of working together, they went more in the individual,” Gautier said.
Although the team felt defeated, they get another swing at the Posse this weekend in provincial action in Calgary. Sorochan said that although they face the Posse again soon, it didn’t make the loss on Wednesday hurt any less.
The two teams are the only squads from the northern region headed to the tournament and they are expected to play each other again at least once over the weekend.
