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www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Friday, June 24, 2016 | 28 Kevin Nagel Sports Editor sports@oakvillebeaver.com Sports "Connected to your Community" Trade from Bengals to Buzz works out just fine for Ryan Smith By Herb Garbutt Oakville Beaver staff A mid-season call from your general manager usually means one thing. So when Ryan Smith answered his phone at the beginning of June, he pretty much knew his two years with the Hamilton Bengals were over. His destination made the news much easier to take as he was headed back to the Oakville Buzz, where he started his junior lacrosse career. "They always have a strong team and I was excited to have the chance to go deep into the playoffs," Smith said. "I've probably played with half or three-quarters of the guys before so it was a very easy transition." Smith led Hamilton with 31 goals in 2015 but the team won just five times and missed the playoffs. With Hamilton headed toward another non-playoff season, the Buzz picked up the 18-year-old Burlington minor lacrosse grad to add to an already deep offensive team that finished the season fifth among 25 teams with 223 goals. Friday night, Smith scored the biggest of those goals, netting the game winner with 38 seconds to play in an 8-7 win over the Halton Hills Bulldogs. The win pulled the Buzz within a point of the Bulldogs. And when Oakville topped its division rivals 17-10 the following night in Georgetown, the Buzz had erased a sevenpoint deficit in two weeks to edge the Bulldogs by a point for the Ontario Jr. B South East Division title. "Saturday our defence played great," Smith, who scored four times, said of the unit that allowed the second fewest Patrick Gamble of the Oakville Buzz breaks through the checks of a couple of Halton Hills Bulldogs' defenders last Saturday at Georgetown's Alcott Arena. The Buzz sewed up first place in the Ontario Jr. B Lacrosse League's South East Division title with a 17-10 victory over the Bulldogs. | Eamonn Maher -- Special to the Beaver goals in the league. "Offensively, we had been having trouble putting the ball in the net but the defence shut them down. The defence has been the backbone for the whole season. It's why we have a chance to do something special this year." "Once Ryan scored that goal Friday, the bench went crazy and there was a tremendous amount of energy and that spilled into Saturday," said Buzz coach Al Burton. "First place is a real pride thing and all the boys wanted that and if you believe in momentum, we're carrying some into the playoffs." Oakville opens its best-of-five playoff series on the road against the Gloucester Griffins. The series opens in Saturday, with game two Sunday. The series returns to Oakville for Games 3-5, which have yet to be scheduled. In Saturday's win to clinch the division title, Oakville fell behind 4-1. The Buzz cut the lead to 5-4 by the end of the period. The game turned ugly in the second as a line brawl that even saw the goalies square off, broke out just 19 seconds into the period. When Halton Hills took another major shortly after, the Buzz took advantage, scoring two power-play goals to kick off a run of six straight goals in a five-minute span. Eddie Renaud had three goals and four assists in the win. Tyler O'Brien, another mid-season acquisition, and Austin Redding also had hat tricks. Meanwhile the teams combined for 249 penalty minutes, with Oakville's 100 minutes accounting for more than 30 per cent of its season total. "We're one of the lowest penalized teams in the province," Burton said. "That tells you the type of tough, disciplined game we play. That's not the kind of game we usually play, but when they wanted to dance, we danced." see Buzz on p. 30 Wrong goalie red-carded may have had impact on outcome of GHAC, OFSAA games By Scott Radley Hamilton Spectator The chairman of the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic School Board says he's waiting for a report from a regional athletics organization before deciding whether to investigate whether a local high school soccer coach took advantage of a referee's clerical mistake and played a goalie that should have been suspended. Pat Daly says the Golden Horseshoe Ath- letic Conference board was meeting Wednesday night and was planning to discuss the issue. When he hears the outcome, he'll decide on his next step. The Spectator ran a story Wednesday which outlined how a star goalie for St. Thomas More got into a fight with the Bishop Tonnos goalie in the Catholic championship. Both received red cards and were sent off. That should have carried a one-game suspension, which would've been at a GHAC game, the last step before the provincials. However, the referee mistakenly marked the ejection beside the backup keeper's name on the game sheet. He had spent the entire game on the sideline and hadn't seen any action. Rather than reporting the gaffe, More played its starting keeper the next game when by rights he should have been sitting. More won, then took silver at the provincials, defeating Oakville's Holy Trinity and others along the way. Hours before the GHAC meeting began, Daly said he was stressing due process and patience because he'd been hearing a different version of events from sources within the board. Though he says he has spoken to none of the main players involved, he says More's head coach, Sandra Moretuzzo -- a teacher and coach he effusively praises -- says she didn't know who was carded late in the Tonnos game. Daly says he heard nearly all the players had spilled onto the field when the skirmish broke out so there was some uncertainty. So she sat the player who was written up. "Some people that were there did not see any red card, some did, some were not sure what student-athletes the red cards were directed toward so I think there's at least some confusion as to what exactly happened," Daly says. "The teacher-coach involved indicates, at least from what I hear, that she did not know which player got the red card." Both sideline officials who worked the game told the Spectator that an assistant coach -- identified by one of them from a More team photo -- approached referee Milan Lasica after the final whistle and asked if the red cards could be written up as yellows. "I've heard from a couple sources ... that absolutely the assistant coach denies trying to influence whether it was a red card or a yellow card given," Daly says. John Gibson, president of the Hamilton and District Soccer Association, which governs the officials, says he stands by his referees and their version of events. "I respect the integrity of our officials," he says. "I cannot see any reason whatsoever they would fabricate or embellish anything." Daly says he's unclear what to expect from GHAC, which is made up of representatives of Hamilton Catholic schools and Halton Catholic and public schools. Thus, he has no idea what, if anything, will follow. "We'll wait and see what happens in the GHAC report," Daly says. "Saying that, any type of ... unethical activities in sports or anywhere else, obviously we would not condone."