Silver and Gold have I won.

Another year, another provincial championship has been played.  The Midget A1 box lacrosse players are the best 15 and 16 year old teams in the province playing for this year’s bragging rights.  Some smaller communities and lacrosse associations have some EXCELLENT players, but not an entire team that can compete fairly at the A1 level.  Langley is a relatively small association but fields an A1 team and is usually in a tough fight to get to the provincial championships and compete for a medal of any colour. (Last year Chris and the A1 Midgets won the Bronze medal which was a major accomplishment.  You can see that winning team including Chris in this photo.)

What the A1’s from Langley did this week is another step forward for these young men, their coaches and the Langley association.  A silver medal is the highest ever achieved at this level of lacrosse for a Langley team. Congrats boys!!

Coquitlam also needs recognition as they lost their first three games in the round robin and then got on an unstoppable roll and were certainly the better team today in the gold medal game against Langley.

Langley’s coach, Dave Wilfong, asked me to say a few words to the guys after the game today.  Dave really cares for the boys he coaches.  He sort of treats each one like an additional son.  He did this for Chris too when Chris was privileged enough to have Dave as his coach last season.  What I told the boys was that Be The Best didn’t always mean winning.  Chris and I had many conversations about this fact when he was upset with Bronze medals or anything less than total domination at a game or tournament.  What Be The Best is really all about is learning.  Learning what to do better.  Learning what to improve.  Picking up some more tools for your journey.

As Dave so aptly stated today, lacrosse is a part of the journey, but not the whole journey.  The bigger picture is career, relationships and community.  Listen to your Coach guys…he knows a thing or two!!

PS  Dave and the team were incredibly gracious to our family today and gave us a silver medal in Chris’ honour as they had played the season in his memory.  That was completely unexpected and humbly and graciously received and will be treasured forever.

PPS You see the pic below of a Coquitlam player’s helmet thrown on the floor as the team rushed to congratulate each other on the big win.  You see the CF 2 sticker on the helmet?  Cool.  A bunch of the players were wearing them.  I loved it.  Thanks guys.  A big congrats for an amazing comeback by a team that no one can ever count out of anything!