Coach's Corner

This section is dedicated to our coach. Read what he has to say.

Coach: Curtis Gulliford
Asst: Dave Blatherwick

May 14th, 2003

Hello everyone and welcome to mine and Dave's corner. I will start by telling you a little about myself and a little about Dave. Okay myself first, I am 27 years old and played the great game of lacrosse for over 22 years. I played all my minor lacrosse in New Westminster where I have been part of many provincial championship teams. I have won PeeWee A gold, Bantam A gold and Midget A gold at the provincial level. I have also won Silver and Bronze medals at these levels. I was voted MVP and Lacrosse Boy of the provincials when I was in my last year of Midget A. After Minor, I played Intermediate A in New West where we once again won a medal at the provincials. After Int. I went on to play my Junior A career in New West where in my first year as a rookie helped my team to win the Minto Cup in 1994 as we beat Brampton in 7 games. I was named to the All-Star team and scored the most goals over the 7 games series. My team went onto another Minto Cup the next year losing in 4 straight to Orangeville. After my 3 years of Junior I then played 5 years with the Maple Ridge Burrards until I recently retired last season.

Dave Blatherwick is also 27 years old and is the defensive mind on the staff. He is a very skilled defensive player in his own right and helped his teams to many championships in his minor days.He is a great friend and teammate of mine when we played. I have played with Dave since I was in Intermediate where we became a twosome. I would play offense and Dave would be the defense to my offense. A great manshort player, Dave has been on the floor at many crucial times for our teams when we had to stop the other teams best offensive players. He will be a huge help to me as he can teach this team a lot about defense that I could not do myself. I appreciate all the help I get from him over this season.

Since this is my first season as a coach I did not know what to expect. When I got my list of kids for the Bantam division I was quite surprised to see the amount of kids registered in the division. When Dave and I grew up we had only two teams in bantam and Ridge Meadows has 5. Tryouts were fun and the boys can attest to this as we had about 10 minutes of dry floor time to do them. I had a lot of tough decisions to make to get to my final roster of 17 and 1 goalie. After the tryouts were finished and we had the first practice I was happy to see that all the boys were ready and willing to learn the system Dave and I had in store for them. The boys have picked it up very fast but like anything else practice will make better.

The games in the tiering round were my first chance to see how the boys would do. We came out of the tiering round at 5 wins and 1 loss. Some games were quite lopsided but the boys played very tough and smart lacrosse. We will see what happens in the regular season but win or lose these boys have treated me to a fun and lasting experience that I will never forget.

I would also like to thank all the parents for their cooperation so far and hope this year will be as much fun for you as it has been so far for Dave and I.

Coach's Corner

Al Lewthwaite gives some help on the bench.