The Kelowna Raiders will battle the Kamloops Rattlers for the 2013 Thompson Okanagan Senior Lacrosse League championship.
Game 1 in best-of-three the league finale goes Wednesday night at Memorial Arena in Kamloops.
Game 2 is set for Friday at Memorial Arena in Kelowna.
The Rattlers won three of five meetings between the teams during the regular season and finished in top spot in the TOSLL.
“They’re a solid team, they’ve got three or four guys who can dominate,” Raiders head coach Doug Manning said of Kamloops. “We’re going to have to match up our best checkers against their best players, play solid defense and get good goaltending.
“We’re playing well right now,” added Manning, “so I’d say this is a 50-50 series, either team could come out on top.”
The Raiders are coming off a two-game sweep of Armstrong in the TOSLL semifinal after a 13-10 victory over the Shamrocks Wednesday night in Kelowna.
Victor Wiens, a solid two-way player for the Raiders, led the attack with four goals, while Joe Brown, Pho Heng and Matt Gorges each scored twice.
Defensively, Darcy Leach, Darren Lornson, Sean Blake and Cody Evans controlled the loose balls and created opportunities for their forwards, while goaltender Graham Cousins shut the door on the Rocks in the late stages of the third period.
And despite an attempt by Armstrong to get the Raiders off their game with physical play, Kelowna didn’t waver from the task at hand.
“We had strong goaltending throughout, and we didn’t react to their physical play,” said Manning. “We didn’t play that game, we stayed disciplined and stayed out of the penalty box. Our offence came alive too, so we did what we needed to do.”
