Tim Troutner went fishing in the ‘Woods on Saturday evening and caught a big one. He pounced on every Whipsnakes’ shot and came up with a huge 13-7 win that sent Redwoods LC into first place with a 4-2 record, partially due to his .710 save percentage.
After the game, Troutner spoke about his performance. Of course, he focused on the giving accolades to everyone other than himself.
“I just wanted to go back to my roots. I just played my game. And hats off to my defense, right? And my coaching staff—we had good game preparation. They [the defense] gave me shots that I wanted to see and I made them—so hats off to the defense. I think it is definitely a really big win that’s been coming to us. But hats off to [Whipsnakes]. They’re still a really good team, and there’s still a lot of season left.”
It wasn’t just the defense and goalies with the solid play. Jules Heningburg was fired up playing against his former team. He made his presence known in the first half when he found the back of the goal cage three times. He also added an assist.
Not to be chopped down were teammates Rob Pannell who had one goal and three assists, Matt Kavanagh with four goals, and Myles Jones with a hat trick. In fact, Redwoods Lacrosse Club was on top of the Whipsnakes every quarter except for the last quarter when each team netted two.
The Whips lost both whip and venom with Matt Rambo still injured and out of the game. And while Simon Mathias, Jay Carlson and Mike Chanenchuk each scored twice, their other teammates could not contribute as many. In fact, Brad Smith was the only other offensive player to score.
The team that appeared unstoppable for the last few seasons has, for the time being, been tamed. The Whipsnakes will need to find new ways to get all offensive players involved if they want to get back to their winning ways. If not, they will quickly find themselves at the bottom of a very competitive league. And while the issue is not solely the offense, it is glaringly obvious that some changes need to be made, starting with the offense.
As for the Redwoods, in the words of their coaching staff, there will be “infinity beers” after this solid performance that showed “ [a] great job… great preparation, [a] great way to stick together… [so] roll ‘Woods.”
And roll, they did.
