July 2nd, 2015   

BRAMPTON, ON - The Oakville Rock headed into Brampton Thursday evening, a humble group, who were quietly confident after winning 3 straight games. Still, the Rock knew taking on the hometown Excelsiors was not going to be an easy task. With six regulars out of the line-up, Oakville was forced to use 4 affiliate players, Chris Buswell and Allister Warren from the Oakville Titans Sr. B, and Dallas Bridle and Lucas Ducharme from the Orangeville Northmen Jr. A.

Captain Stephan Leblanc was back in the lineup after missing Monday's game at home and he opened the scoring 9 minutes into the game on a pass from Dan Lomas. The Excelsiors were quick to respond, about a minute and a half in Tyler Ferreira answered to tie it at 1. Allister Warren  scored his first Major Lacrosse goal at 12:20. That was followed up by a Dan Lomas power play marker. With Just under 4 minutes to play in the first, Lucas Ducharme gave the Rock a 4-2 lead, which is how the teams would head into the first intermission.

The Rock would jump out to a three goal lead in the second period, as Dallas Bridle would get in on the scoring. That lead was short lived though as the Excelsiors would bang one in off the stick of Dan Keane, his second of the game. Matt Spanger would score on a nice individual effort to pull the Excelsiors within 1 and Brampton captain Chris Corbeil would tie it before the end of the period heading into the final frame tied at 5's.

The teams traded chances early in the third, both goaltenders making saves. Just past the 10 minute mark, Rock defender Eric Pitre transitioned the ball up the floor and found a streaking Chris Buswell who beat Tyler Carlson over the shoulder to give Oakville the lead again. A late charge by the Excelsiors was failed as Nick Rose made the final save, to secure the Rock's 4th victory in as many games. The win leapfrogs the Rock from 5th place and into sole possession of the 3rd spot in the standings, ahead of Brooklin, Brampton and K-W.

Head Coach Matt Sawyer was quick to praise the affiliate players who suited up for the Rock.

"You know, we have guys that we rely on to score and they usually do that for us, but sometimes you need some secondary scoring from unlikely guys and you need a little extra from them and all those guys came to play tonight and they scored 4 of our 6 goals."

When asked if teams around the league might start to be thinking this Oakville Rock team is for real? Sawyer said they aren't too concerned what other people think.

"I don't mean this to sound bad, but we don't really care what people think. We can only control what we do. One game at a time, we can only focus on the 60 minutes ahead of us."

So, the team that has experienced two different types of extended streaks this season, both losing and winning, will look to extend the latter as they return home to take on the Peterborough Lakers next Monday, July 6th at the Toronto Rock Athletic Centre game time is 8 PM, still great seats available.