It was a close one, and the stakes were high.
In a single-game playoff for the right to play Wales in the bronze-medal game at the European Field Lacrosse Championship, Cole Paciejewski and Team Scotland fell one goal shy of their objective Wednesday in Budapest, Hungary.
They lost 9-8 to Finland. Instead of playing for a medal Saturday, Scotland will play for seventh place in the 20-team tournament.
The 22-year-old Paciejewski, a Prince George native and graduate of the field lacrosse program of Pfeiffer University in North Carolina, left for Europe to join his Scottish teammates two weeks ago.
His plane left the day after he helped the Claude's Barber Shop/BX Pub Bandits complete a three-game-sweep of the Westwood Pub Devils in the Prince George Senior (Box) Lacrosse Association championship series.
Paciejewski's family in Prince George is of Scottish descent, which qualified him to play for the national team as an import.
Scotland won its first four games in the round-robin tournament.
The Scots opened July 28 with a 10-8 win over Ireland, then beat Denmark 15-4, Norway 12-10 and Austria 16-1. They lost 12-8 to Wales, setting up Wednesday's quarterfinal.
In Wednesday's other quarterfinal playoffs, Israel stopped Germany 8-2, Wales topped Netherlands 12-5 and England defeated Switzerland 12-3.
England, an eight-time European champion, has won the tournament the last three times (2004, 2008, 2012), ever since it switched from an annual event to the current once-every-four-years format.
The event was first played in 1995.
The only year the English team did not win was 2001, when they had to settle for a second-place finish.
