Denver is long gone and winter is coming to an end. With the season’s change you might be wondering what is going on in Norwegian lacrosse at the moment?
Here’s a quick rundown on what’s going on in the Norwegian lacrosse world.
Tournament Time
The first tournament of the year was held in the beautifully unique town of Trondheim, the 18th through 22nd of February. It was known as the “Student Olympics” where lacrosse was one of many sports.
For the first time in Norwegian lacrosse, an emerging team won the men’s title as the best college team. The BI Chiefs from Bergen beat the home favorite from NTNUI of Trondheim. The final was close, but the Chiefs came out 6-5.
The HiOA Kings from Oslo took home the bronze medal. A huge congratulations goes out to all who participated for putting on a great tournament for all the teams.
Tournament MVPs
Women: Marthe O. Skaare, BI Lionesses Oslo
Men: Ryan Roman, BI Chiefs Bergen
In the coming couple of weeks, we will get our final four teams ready for the national championship. There will be two seperate tournaments with teams split, one held in Kristiansand and one held in Bergen. The winners of each tournament moves on tp play the Second Place seeds from the other group in the semi-finals.
We expect this to be a truly exciting event that looks to be a close race for the title. Amongst the men’s teams, NTNUI has a very strong squad and the defending champion Oslo Legends will also be hard to crack. The dark horses making their run for the title looks to be the BI Chiefs and the Grimstad Grizzlies.
In the ladies’ events the the fights seems to be between BI Lionesses, Grimstad Cubs and HiOA Queens. The outsider here might be NTNUI.
We also recently got a new team in Norway, located in Lillehammer (known world-wide from the series “Lillyhammer” and the 1994 Olympic Winter Games)
National Teams
For the first time in history, the Norwegian women’s lacrosse team is entering an ELF European championship. The ladies are working hard in preparation and getting together once a month for hard training camps.
“We want to finish in the top third of the competing nations. The girls work hard to make the cut we have to make from 30 to 18 players. Like the Norwegian men’s team, we also chose to only bring Norway based players. We do it this way to bring all the experience back home to the players club teams.”- Coach Aksel Kvaal said.
The team will enter a tournament in Austria in June, before participating in the European Championships in the Czech Republic in August.
The men’s team from Denver 2014 has continued to advance their program and looks ahead to EC 2016. New players have been invited to the training squad and they are looking great.
The competition for the 23 spots has never been tougher, and coach Dan Scolaro will have a lot of players to pick from when making the cut next year. The Norwegian men’s team will also be looking to enter an European tournament this summer.
Make sure to follow @norwegianlacrosse on Instagram for photos in events to come!