The Carleton Ravens men’s lacrosse team wrapped up their season on Oct. 16 at MNP Park with a 12-8 loss to the Bishop’s University Gaiters.
“It would have been nicer to have gotten the win,” said Ravens head coach Jeremy Strong. “But to play a team like Bishop’s and have a 12-8 loss it’s a good spot to be in.”
Bishop’s attack Cam Bateman scored two goals while on the power play to put the Gaiters in front early.
Taren Cook and Gabriel Chamberlain would each add goals for Bishop’s in the first quarter to give the Gaiters a 4-0 lead.
In the second quarter Bishop’s continued to keep up the pace, with Andrew Neilson scoring on a power play and Eric Mawdsley also scoring five minutes later.
Neilson and Mawdsley would add one more goal each before Ravens attack Aaron Woods put up their first goal with just under six minutes left to play in the half.
With a minute and a half left, Woods added his second goal of the game to cut Bishop’s lead down to six.
“The guys were definitely kinda sleeping in the first half of the game but they definitely found themselves in the second half,” Strong said. “You watch the way that we played this season and the scores don’t reflect the team that we are.”
To begin the second half both teams played strong defence not allowing any scoring chances. But Bishop’s broke the deadlock after 11 minutes with Bateman, adding his third strike of the contest.
With two minutes left, Neilson added his third goal of the afternoon to make it 10-2 for the visitors.
With one minute left in the quarter, Carleton middie Ty Logan found himself in a scoring position and converted on a feed from Nick Pentleluke to put the Ravens behind 10-3 going into the final quarter.
Carleton’s offence then exploded with Pentleluke, Woods, and Steven Snowling scoring goals within a span of three minutes to put Carleton within five goals.
But Simon Winquist scored an unassisted marker to restore Bishop’s five goal cushion with just under 10 minutes left to play.
Four minutes later Carleton middie Cam Breen scored an unassisted goal to put Carleton behind 11-7.
But Bishop’s Rhett Handley added an unassisted goal to put the game just about out of reach with just under three minutes left to play.
Just 40 seconds later though, Carleton attack Noah Hoselton scored an unassisted goal but it was too little too late for the home squad who had fallen behind early.
“We had a great level of compete,” Strong said. “It’s very frustrating that we can’t pull out wins but you could tell Bishop’s were worried near the end.”
According to Strong, this would typically mean the end of the season and players would go back to doing training on their own but this year the team is looking to try and find some field time in the off season and improve as team going into next season.
