Just because he's good enough to play for B.C.'s senior elite provincial field lacrosse team, that doesn't mean Domenico Sia has found a path to easy street.
In fact, the 17 year old from Prince George had to become a road warrior and a frequent flyer to fulfill his commitment to his Vancouver-based team.
From late-May, right up until late-July, when he traveled to Baltimore, Md., with the Burnaby Mountain Selects to play in the Champ Cup national championship, Sia made the trip south every weekend.
"It is really hard for me, living here and going down every week -- I didn't miss one practice and that's about 10 or 12 trips," Sia said. "I think I played really well, my coach was happy with me."
The Selects were the only Canadian team of the 72 that entered the U.S. tournament and played well enough to advance to the top-32 championship bracket. Playing in a country where field lacrosse is a big deal, especially in the hotbed of the sport in the northeastern states, was a thrill for the Burnaby Mountain team.
Surrounded by scouts from all the top NCAA programs, the Selects didn't advance as far as they would have liked, finishing with a 2-5 record. But despite the blazing heat, with humidex readings well into the 40s, the experience was well worth the effort.
"We played really good in our first four games and that got us into the playoffs and then the last couple games we didn't play that well," said Sia, a midfielder. "We did fairly good for the only Canadian team down there."
Miguel DaSilva of Prince George, 16, was Sia's travel partner the past two months as a defenceman for the Burnaby Mountain Selects junior elite team. DaSilva, like Sia, was the only member of his provincial team from the northern half of the province. The two will likely be teammates next year on the Burnaby Mountain senior team.
The juniors played in the 40-team Syracuse University Summer Shootout in mid-July against the top club teams from New York and Ohio and came away with a 1-4-1 record. That tournament was watched by 60 college coaches, including members of the staff from Syracuse University, who won back-to-back NCAA Division 1 titles in 2008 and 2009.
College scholarships are a big deal in field lacrosse and some players are being rewarded with $65,000 annual packages to attend NCAA schools. Sia is a straight-A student heading into his Grade 12 year at College Heights secondary school, and that opens him up to opportunities for academic as well as athletic scholarships. On Tuesday he was selected as a winner of Burnaby Mountain's scholar athlete award, handed out to all players in the program who achieve an academic average of 80 per cent or better.
An aspiring dentist, Sia is leaning toward Simon Fraser University and plans to write his SAT tests over the next few months to prepare for SFU, now part of the NCAA's Division 2. The head coach of the SFU Clan, Brent Hoskins, also calls the shots for the Burnaby Mountain senior team. Hoskins wanted Sia to be part of Burnaby Mountain's fall program but due to his heavy school workload at College Heights decided not to attend.
Instead, he will be playing with a local group of field lacrosse players headed by coach Bill Barwise, a program that runs through the winter at the Northern Sport Centre, leading up the provincial championship in February.
Sia also plays box lacrosse in the Prince George Senior Lacrosse Association for the College Heights Pub Assault. The PGSLA champions will be in action next week at the Treasure Cove Casino Senior Invitational/senior C provincial tournament at the Kin Centre.
