Heading into their first season in the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse League Senior C Division, the Lethbridge Pioneers of the Lethbridge Lacrosse Association would have been happy winning one game.
Turns out, they achieved that goal, and then piled eight more wins on top of it.
As the Pioneers head into the league semifinals against the Calgary Irish - with Game 1 tentatively slated for July 23 at 7 p.m. at the Servus Sports Centre - they do so with a 9-3 record that proves the first-year team is hardly out of their league.
It's made for a memorable rookie run.
"It's been amazing, these boys just jelled," said Pioneers manager Connie Hamilton. "We have players starting at 21 years of age and our oldest player was 51. They just bonded so well."
While the Pioneers lost to Red Deer last weekend and will settle for second heading into the post season, team captain David Isaak said the season has been a pleasant surprise.
"The way all the other teams were talking, they sounded like they were going to have some really good players," said Isaak. "They had these big plans for their team. We just showed up and played our game. I guess we were able to stick with these teams. I knew our team was going to learn a lot from playing older guys. A lot of us haven't played senior before, so I thought that was going to be a big step for us. But our youth and our speed helped us out and we learned as we went on and just got better."
But expectations were kept low at the start.
"When we were talking with the other teams involved at the annual general meeting we walked away saying 'if we win one game, it'll be a successful season,'" said Hamilton. "One the rules we had to put in our league was no active professional lacrosse players could be on the roster. There could be people from the practice roster from the Rush or the Roughnecks or people on the injured reserve list could be on the team. We don't have that in Lethbridge. We can't just pull up guys that are on the practice roster of the Rush. So we thought going in it was going to be rough. But when you have a team that jells as good as they did it doesn't matter what the talent. They play together and they win."
Assistant captain James Hamilton was another of the pleasantly surprised Pioneers.
"Way better than expected," said James. "We heard other teams had access to the senior B league and had experience in the higher-up leagues. We were going in to have some fun and trying to keep playing lacrosse and we ended up surprising ourselves and everyone else."
However, after two close games with Edmonton and Calgary to start the season, the Pioneers came to the realization they could hang with the rest of the league.
"We played Edmonton, they really didn't have too many guys so it was hard to tell with that one," said James. "Then we played Calgary and we expected them to blow us out. But we were within two goals. It was the same with Red Deer, we lost by one goal and they had beaten Calgary. So at that point we thought 'wow, we can actually make a run for this.' It just took off from there."
The Lethbridge Lacrosse Association was formed to give athletes a place to play after their junior days.