The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Wrap up season this weekend
by Stan Cola
It is a fast and furious season for the West Elk Warriors Lacrosse season with U9, U12 and U15 teams participating in tournaments throughout Colorado.
The Warriors traveled to four straight weekends of tournaments in Grand Junction, Vail, Aspen and Durango. Each of these tournaments hosts up to 100 teams including upper and lower divisions from U9 through U15 as well as girls lacrosse levels.
West Elk lacrosse also continues to fine-tune their game with several practices each week and with scrimmages against Montrose teams, coming home with several wins.
In the Aspen shootout last weekend the U12 team played three games on Saturday, winning all three by just one goal.
They started off the day playing the Grand Valley Spartans from Grand Junction. The Warriors lost to this team in the Grand Junction tournament two weeks earlier but put up a tough fight to come away with a 5-4 victory. Their second game they put away a tough team from Summit County by the same score of 5-4. The last game of the day the Warriors faced Vail and the score went back and forth with the lead never more than one goal. Max Dukeman went in on attack for the last few minutes of the game and scored the clinching goal on an assist from AJ Hegeman and Luke Walton to seal the one goal win.
The Warriors went into the final day of the tournament undefeated but met up with an all-star team from Colorado Springs and could not pull off one more win to seal a spot in the finals. The Crested Butte and Gunnison boys ended up 3-1 for the tournament, tied with Telluride, but missed playing in the finals because of the goals scored against rule. They ended up placing third out of seven teams.
The Durango tournament is next weekend and the West Elk Warrior U12 team is heading in with a full head of steam looking to come out with a victory to end the season.
Thanks to the coaches, parents and athletes, each team has seen incredible improvements this season and is expecting great results as they gear up for the final tournament in Durango next weekend.
