A trio of St. Albert peewee A lacrosse players returned home with bronze medals from nationals last week in New Westminster and Coquitlam, B.C.
Mathieu Gautier, Ethan Leyer and Ronin Pusch ran the floor for Team Alberta, 6-2 winners over Saskatchewan in the bronze playoff.
Alberta finished the round robin at 3-2 and in the semifinal fell 5-2 to B.C. In the loss Gautier scored his team-leading seventh goal of the tournament. He finished second on the team in points with nine in seven games and was named to the five-man all-star team.
Pusch recorded two goals and three assists and Leyer added two goals.
B.C. was awarded silver after losing the final 8-2 to Ontario.
Green was the winning colour at the third annual Junior Ryder Cup last weekend at the Sturgeon Valley Golf & Country Club.
Team Green won the three-day U18 competition and the lineup featured Brody Eggleton (junior male club champion), Keaton Lockwood, Nick Cuciz, Ronan Keohane, Chad Montpetit, Andrew Altobelli, Neeve Keohane, Brooke Brezovski and Bella Cuciz. The captain was PGA of Alberta professional Jordan Rodda.
The skills competition, similar to the Big Break television series on the Golf Channel, was staged Friday night. Points were awarded in the long drive contest, flop wall challenge, approach shot, bunker shot, putting challenge and glass break challenge.
Saturday’s matches were divided into two formats: modified scotch two-ball on the front nine and two-man scramble on the back nine.
Sunday started with a two-person team best score on the front nine and singles matches on the back nine.
Team Green led after the skills competition but after Saturday it was Team Blue in first place. Team Green mounted a comeback on Sunday to capture the trophy.
Molly James, the St. Albert Tennis Club pro, celebrated a historic national championship with the University of Alberta tennis program.
Last weekend at the Canadian University and College Tennis Championship in Montreal a combined team of Golden Bears and Pandas claimed Alberta’s first national tennis title and became the first team outside the province of Quebec to be crowned champions in the six-year history of the event.
The tournament’s co-ed format featured singles and doubles rolled into one overall team score. All the teams played a mixture of singles (three men and three women) and doubles (two men, two women and one mixed) for an overall match score.
James competed in mixed doubles as Alberta defeated McGill 6-5 Friday, the program’s first win over a team from Quebec, and Sunday knocked off Western Ontario University 9-2 for the gold after settling for silver the previous three years.
James has played an integral part of the continued success of the junior program this year at the St. Albert Tennis Club.
