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Junior Timbermen start lacrosse season with a loss

The junior A Nanaimo Timbermen lost 16-4 to the Victoria Shamrocks on Friday at Frank Crane Arena
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Victoria Shamrocks player Max Wilson, left, is checked by Nanaimo Timbermen opponent Will Johanssen during the first game of the B.C. Junior A Lacrosse League season on Friday night at Frank Crane Arena. (GREG SAKAKI/The News Bulletin)

Junior lacrosse season didn’t start off on the right foot.

The junior A Nanaimo Timbermen were defeated 16-4 by the Victoria Shamrocks in the first game of 2017 on Friday night at Frank Crane Arena.

“I honestly don’t think that they’re a better team than us by that much, but they played better tonight,” said Dave Bremner, coach and general manager of the T-men.

The home team closed the margin to 6-3 midway through the second period, but the visitors got the momentum back and put the game out of reach.

Bremner said Victoria’s defenders did a good job limiting time and space for Nanaimo’s forwards.

“But the fact that we held onto the ball was not helping our case,” the coach said. “We did a lot of standing around in the offensive end and the way to beat that sort of pressure is by passing and cutting.”

Bremner suggested the Timbermen need to develop a winning attitude to be able to win games and didn’t chalk up the loss to having a young team.

“We still have some guys on this team that know how to play the game of lacrosse and we have some young guys who are very talented,” he said. “I think that they just need to have more belief in themselves.”

T-men player Tyler Ward said his team is motivated to keep playing hard.

“We’ve got a good group of guys here, we work hard in practice. We’ll try to get as much drills in as we can to work on fundamentals,” he said. “I think we’ve got a good group to make something good happen.”

The junior Timbermen didn’t have any exhibitions this spring and Bremner said now that he’s seen his team in game action, the coaching staff can address specific problem areas.

“When you see a couple of things happening out there and the same mistakes being made over and over again, you can actually start to fix them,” he said. “So it wasn’t a whole bunch of mistakes, it was a couple of mistakes were just glaring.”

Colton Lidstone scored twice for Nanaimo and Will Johanssen and Drew McFayden were the other scorers. Goalie Kain Stewart made 36 saves in defeat.

For Victoria, Brian Robb scored four goals, Griffin Wilson had a hat trick and Cole Pickup tallied two goals and three assists. Will Kinnaird was the winning goalie.

GAME ON … The junior Timbermen visit the defending-champion Coquitlam Adanacs on Sunday (April 23). Next home action is May 7, when the Burnaby Lakers visit Frank Crane Arena for a 4:30 p.m. faceoff.

sports@nanaimobulletin.com