The Vancouver Island-Central Coast team dominated the box lacrosse tournament at the BC Summer Games.
The Zone 6 squad, which included Cowichan Valley Lacrosse Association product Devyn Zunti, went undefeated through four games to capture the gold medal, with just one scare.
After beating Vancouver-Coastal 8-1 on Friday afternoon and Cariboo-North East 16-0 on Saturday morning, the Island team ran into a bit of trouble in their last round-robin game, against Fraser River at Kerry Park Arena on Saturday afternoon.
Tied 5-5 at the end of regulation with a berth in the gold-medal game on the line, the Island team managed to pull off the 6-5 victory in sudden-death overtime.
Had Zone 6 lost that game, it would have put them into a three-way tie with Fraser River and Vancouver-Coastal, and the tiebreaker wasn’t in Vancouver Island-Central Coast’s favour.
“It would have gone down to who scored the first goal of the game,” Zunti explained, admitting his team was nervous. “And Fraser River scored the first goal.”
It all worked out for the Zone 6 team, who advanced to the championship game at Fuller Lake Arena on Sunday morning, where they defeated Thompson-Okanagan 10-5, with Zunti picking up a pair of assists.
“It felt pretty exciting,” Zunti said. “I had an amazing time.”
Winning gold was the highlight of the BC Summer Games for Zunti, who enjoyed the weekend on and off the arena floor.
“It was a really good experience,” he said. “I met lots of people.”
After playing four games over the three days of the Games, Zunti was back in action on Monday as a call-up from midget for the junior B Cowichan Valley Thunder in their Island final series opener. His busy summer will continue as the Cowichan midget B team is at provincials this weekend, the junior B team heads to provincials the following weekend, and then he is set to join Team BC at the midget national championships in Calgary on Aug. 12-19.
