Heading into the South Sask Lacrosse League gold medal final on Sunday afternoon at the Moose Jaw Event Centre, the Moose Jaw Mustangs looked to have things pretty much in hand.
As the top seeds in the tournament, they’d won their previous two games, their opponent in the final had played twice earlier in the day and it seemed as if an easy gold medal would be in the cards.
Instead, the QCMBL Waterdogs would give absolutely everything they had, defeating the Mustangs 10-8 in the first game of the final to force a 10-minute mini-game for the championship, a contest that ended tied 1-1.
Two overtime periods later, Cooper Bruce would haul in a pass from goaltender Colton Flanagan, take advantage of a breakdown in the Waterdogs' defence and beat goaltender Cam Volk with the game-winning goal.
And just like that, the Moose Jaw Mustangs are the 2023 South Sask Lacrosse League U17 champions.
“I kept running out of things to tell the boys, but I kept reiterating that they’re resilient and can come back from anything, and either way we’re proud of them,” said Mustangs coach Chris Flanagan. “We’ve always only asked for three things from them: effort, being aggressive and having fun. Today, they did all three of those things and it showed, they found a way to win a big game in overtime.”
That things got to overtime the first place was the product of an amazing back-and-forth battle. QCMBL led 8-5 midway through the third period, but Moose Jaw scored three times in less than two minutes to tie things up. Caleb Singer-Schele would score twice for the Waterdogs in the final 5:19, though, and they’d have their win to force the deciding mini-game.
Lachlan Clark had a hat trick for Moose Jaw in the first contest, while Chase McKee scored twice to go along with single markers from Ryder Gilroy, Brodyn Pladson and Ethan Nordi.
Pladson scored with 3:39 remaining in the mini-game, but Merek Casemore replied for QCMBL with 1:09 remaining to force overtime and set up Bruce’s heroics.
“Cooper had a great game today and he had a chance before that, so it was nice to see him get that one,” coach Flanagan said. “It’s kind of funny, our goalie made a rainbow pass that I was kind of pissed off about, but at the end of the day it worked out, Cooper got it and ran down and scored. He played phenomenal this weekend and I’m really happy for all the guys to win this championship.”
Other than that slightly errant pass, Colton Flanagan -- coach Chris’ son -- was absolutely outstanding, making a host of huge saves in both games. Volk was just as sharp at the other end of the floor, and for a time it looked as if the duo were going to see to it the game would never end.
“I’m the coach, but I’m also a goalie dad and it was great to see Colton play so well,” Chris said. “And we know Cam, too, he’s a great goaltender and they both made it really tough to score.”
That the Waterdogs were able to play as well as they did despite taking the floor in two games earlier in the day drew praise from Flanagan.
“You have to give major kudos to Regina, they made us work today,” he said. “We had a short bench, but at the end of the day it was just back-and-forth and we needed to make sure we stuck to our gameplan no matter how hard they kept coming.”
The Mustangs are now off to Calgary for the Canada Day tournament this coming weekend before the best in the province return to Moose Jaw for the Sask Lacrosse Association provincials.
“We said at the beginning of the weekend that we had a target on our backs and I think that target just got a little bigger,” Flanagan said. “We’ll take it, for sure.”
