Blue Devils' hot start a distant memory
By MORRIS DALLA COSTA -- London Free Press
It wasn't quite the fairy tale ending any of them imagined. It was sort of like watching Dorothy melting and Toto going to the pound; like Snow White snoozing through the kiss, Cinderella with a size 12 foot or Pinocchio being part of a good old fashioned bonfire.
You get the picture.
The London Blue Devils of the Ontario Lacrosse Association junior B league lived the fairy tale-turned-nightmare this season. The expansion team started the season with two wins and a loss and the season looked rosy. For all intents and purposes the team finished the season yesterday with a 13-8 loss to the Windsor AKO Fratmen. It was their 16th loss of the season against three wins.
As difficult as it was to believe, the Blue Devils still had a chance to make the playoffs. They were chasing the Fratmen, who only had four wins and a tie. Beat the Fratmen and they would still have needed at least a tie against the powerhouse Sarnia Pacers Wednesday. Now that game means nothing and the Fratmen join the Pacers in the playoffs.
The Blue Devils are the first junior lacrosse team at any level in London. They found out quickly how difficult getting established really can be.
"No kidding it was harder than expected," Blue Devils president Brian Laporte said. "We weren't as deep as other teams and it was a larger learning curve, not only for the players but the coaches and management as well. We always seemed to be reinventing the wheel.
"And when you lose as many games as we did, it's tough to keep the players up. Then some players get frustrated and want to do it all themselves. It's like a dog chasing its tail."
Yesterday's game was a snapshot of how the Blue Devils season has gone.
They played solidly in the first period and early in the second, taking a 3-1 lead. With less than 10-minutes left in the third period, they were trailing 10-4. The Blue Devils managed to pull it back to 10-8, in large part by pulling their goalie to get an extra attacker on the floor whenever they got the ball. But a couple of turnovers allowed Windsor to score into an empty net and it was game over.
David Rivait led the Fratmen with three goals, with Rob Tellier and John Montague scoring two each. Singles went to Nick Zdonek, Tony Chartrand, Jamie Pillon, Karontose Jacobs, Kohe Diabo and David Hodgins.
Josh Brown had a pair of goals for the Blue Devils with singles to Herbie John, Chris Hollister, Brent Yost, Graham Marshall, Mike Bonk, Aaron Yost and Sean Earnshaw.
Head coach Reg Gordon who said before the season he would be horribly disappointed if his team didn't finish at .500, was more than horribly disappointed. He talked about injuries his team suffered and the lack of depth. But he was more disturbed about what he perceived to be a "lack of commitment with a capital C."
"There's about 12 guys who if you called practice at two in the morning in Timbuktu, they would find a way to be there," said Gordon. "But not enough of the others were committed to practices and games. We didn't have enough discipline. We thought we'd gotten the retaliation stuff behind us and then certain guys would do it again.
"When we selected the team at the start of the year, we thought we had a team that would take us to the playoffs. But we learned a lot of things. We learned how to select a team, how to get a team off the ground. It was lots of work. Unfortunately, everything we learned, we learned the hard way."
While the ultimate goal was to be a lot better than this team wound up being, there is hope for the future. The Blue Devils were forced to use many young players, so they will be better prepared for next season. The team executive remained strong and committed, and throughout the nightmarish run the fans kept coming out to watch.
Maybe next year there'll be a happy ending.
