While southwest Saskatchewan faces down a spring blizzard, the Swift Current Wolverines are doing the same.<\/p>\n
The Wolverines are set for a demanding early season test this weekend with three games in two days against the Winnipeg Blizzard in the Prairie Gold Junior Lacrosse League.<\/p>\n
Strong start at home<\/p>\n
The busy stretch comes after an encouraging start to the season, as the Wolverines opened with an 11-9 comeback win over Moose Jaw.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think some of the boys were pretty nervous off the hop there,” said Wolverines Head Coach Kevin Schafer. “New league, new game for some of the younger guys. We started out a little sluggish and got our feet under us there in the second and third, and I think we showed some improvements throughout the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Related Stories:<\/p>\n
Schafer said the ability to battle back against a familiar rival was a positive sign.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo bounce back and come from behind a couple of times in that game was a big deal for us,\u201d he said. “The boys had some missed assignments early on and then made a couple of adjustments and the defence really settled in and played a really strong game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conditioning Test<\/p>\n
That progress will be tested this weekend with a condensed schedule. They’ll play two games Saturday and another Sunday in Winnipeg against a new opponent in the league.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s going to be a big, big adjustment three games within a 24-hour span there,\u201d Schafer said. \u201cA lot of it\u2019s going to be just managing the ball a little bit\u2026 let the ball do the work.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Blizzard are a new addition to the league this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll be relatively unknown, but it should be good,\u201d Schafer said, adding Winnipeg programs have traditionally been competitive despite smaller numbers.<\/p>\n
Road trip bonding<\/p>\n
Beyond the on-floor challenge, Schafer believes the road trip could help bring his team together early in the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was kind of one of\u00a0the key factors behind getting on the road early in the season like this,” he siad. “We\u00a0don’t\u00a0get a lot of a lot of overnight\u00a0road\u00a0trips. This will\u00a0definitely be good for the boys to get on the bus and hang out for 8-9 hours on the bus and then do everything in the group on the weekend for sure.”<\/p>\n
The Wolverines play Winnipeg at 12:00 pm and 7:00 pm on Saturday, and again at 12:00 pm on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While southwest Saskatchewan faces down a spring blizzard, the Swift Current Wolverines are doing the same. The Wolverines…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-626177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}