The Nanaimo Timbermen added some scoring punch at this year’s draft.
The Western Lacrosse Association Draft was held last week, and the senior A T-men came out of it with the B.C. Junior A Lacrosse League’s top two scorers from 2018.
Nanaimo chose Braylon Lumb from Victoria in the first round, fifth overall, then had two second-round choices and took Dylan Foulds from Coquitlam 11th and then David Byrne from Victoria 12th.
Lumb was the BCJALL’s leading scorer last year with 57 goals and 103 points and Foulds was second with 96 points. Both are right-handers.
Chris Bowman, Timbermen president, said he likes how Lumb can get inside to create scoring chances.
“He’s not just a pure outside shooter; he gets to those greasy spots on the floor and to finish 57 times in that 20-game schedule is huge,” Bowman said.
While Lumb is expected to report to the Timbermen, Foulds isn’t – he’s planning to forgo summer lacrosse and work in the financial district in New York City. Bowman said Foulds is worth a wait.
“Talking to other GMs, he probably would have went second or third in the draft if he was coming home this summer,” Bowman said. “So when we got to the second round, it was like, yeah, we’ve got to take him.”
After choosing the two attackers, the Timbermen went with a straight shutdown defender with their next pick. Bowman said Byrne is tireless and battles for every loose ball.
The T-men also had two selections in the third round and chose Eddie Smith and Liam Young. Smith is a transition player who can score and Young is a Nanaimo product who won a Minto Cup with the Coquitlam Adanacs.
Other draft picks included Jake Mickelson, Brad Phillips, Chris Benedict, Brady Georget, Riley Taylor and Taylor Martin.
“It wasn’t an overly deep draft…” Bowman said. “So we did try to move up a few times and we did talk a lot with every team before the draft about trades, but people were asking the sun, moon and the stars to move up this year.”
He said the selections went “very close” to his expectations. He said in a way, it was nice that Nanaimo was “down the ladder a bit” in the draft order.
“It’s good because it means we’re winning,” Bowman said. “It’s the first time in the four years that I’ve done the draft that we haven’t been up near the top.”
The Timbermen president said he would still like to add a high-end offensive player and will be “shopping back east” to try to find one. He said Nanaimo’s NLL players have also offered help with recruiting and all have different ideas about guys who might make good additions to the T-men.
sports@nanaimobulletin.com
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter