In a sport as physical as lacrosse, size is a considerable advantage.
Chase Taylor knows that better than anyone in the bantam division of the Great White North Lacrosse League. Standing just four-foot-six and weighing 80 pounds, the 13-year-old Taylor was literally half the size of quite a few of the Vanderhoof Bears he had to face Saturday afternoon at Kin 1, but he wasn't backing down.
"It's scary, I can tell you that," said Taylor, who hit the deck hard in the third period after taking the brunt of an illegal high hit from Bears defender Myles Patrick. "I don't want to get creamed, that's for sure, but I'm not really afraid. They were feisty, but Quesnel was worse."
Taylor took his lumps, trying to be an irresistible force against what seemed immovable objects, but he also forced a few turnovers and the Prince George Posse Blue rolled to an 18-6 win.
"Chase has got more fight in him than our biggest guys - he's a little Chihuahua who fights like a bulldog," said Posse head coach Rod Nemitz. "Our first game, he completely leveled a guy who was probably a good two feet over his height. He took one today - a guy got him in the neck - but he shakes it off and goes back out."
Not known for his playmaking prowess, Taylor set up Fischer O'Brien for the opening goal four minutes into the first period, which sparked the Posse offence to life.
"Chase runs fast and if he gets knocked down he gets right back up," said Posse Blue forward Jackson Parish, 14.
Backed by an abundance of fresh legs on the floor, the Posse took advantage of a Bears team playing its second game of the day. Matt Magrath lit up the Posse scoreboard with eight goals and four assists, O'Brien finished with six goals and three assists, with singles from Parish, Cam Needham and Austin Adams, who also had three assists.
Ethan Floris scored three for Vanderhoof, Josh Van der Giesen had a two-goal game and Kael Evans also scored on Posse goalie Ryan Nemitz.
"We had a couple extra runners and we moved the ball around well and played a good team game," said the 14-year-old Magrath. "They're a big physical team that likes to play the body. I was expecting it to be a little closer."
Posse Blue has lost just one of its six Great White North games this season and that defeat happened a couple weeks ago in Vanderhoof, where the Bears beat them 7-4. But on Saturday, the Bears had just eight spare bodies on the bench and all that running took a toll. They had trouble keeping up to their opponents and took a string of penalties that played into the hands of the Posse.
A few hours before they took on Posse Blue, Vanderhoof lost a hard-hitting 8-7 decision to Prince George Posse White. Gavin Cailler's unassisted effort with 1:53 left on the clock stood as the winner for Prince George. Jacob Gendron led the way with four goals and Riley Stevens had a two-goal effort.
"It was tough on them, playing two games back-to-back against a team that's only playing one game," said Bears coach Tony Martin, who coached a combined Vanderhoof/Mackenzie team that had just eight players to the midget C provincial title last year.
"They're young but still it's hard on them, it's tiring. The first game was physical and took a lot out of them."
Bears captain Griffin Thiessen was expecting a much different game Saturday afternoon.
"Last time we won and this time we got lit, it sucked," said Thiessen, who will play up with the midget team at the provincial C tournament in Coquitlam. "The games were pretty close together. We got frustrated and took a lot of penalties."
Magrath and Parish play on the Posse bantam rep team along with O'Brien and Jake Nohr. Prince George has an automatic berth in the A2 bantam provincial tournament in Vancouver, July 16-19. The Posse finished fourth at the A2 finals last year.
Against their provincial peers this season in tournament play, the Posse rep team has done quite well, finishing second two weekends ago in Penticton, after posting fourth-place results in Vernon and Kamloops. Then Posse will travel to Edmonton for the Canada Day tournament, July 1-3.
There were enough bantam-aged (13- and 14-year-old) players in Prince George to form three house league teams and the three squads are close in calibre, although the Blue team has yet to lose to either of the other two teams.
"Our mid-range guys and our low guys are really stepping it up and I think that's what the difference is," said coach Nemitz. "The top-of-the-line guys are pretty even across the board on all the teams."
Great White North playoffs start this weekend at the Kin Centre.
