Underdog Venom, not fans of tournament championship format, aiming for fourth straight TOJLL title

The Kelowna Kodiaks (10-4-2) are riding a nine-game winning streak and secured the regular-season title, finishing four points ahead of the Venom (8-6-2) to snare the No. 1 seed.

“With us kind of coming back down to earth a little bit and kind of not having our dominant team as we’ve had, it does create parity in our league and it’s good for the league,” Venom general manager Brad Watson said.

“I never thought it would be a bad thing if we weren’t winning 21-2 and 19-6. We’re playing really hard-fought games and not always ending up on top, which is OK because, really, in this format it doesn’t matter where you finish.”

The Venom GM did not shy away from establishing his club’s position on moving to a tournament from the traditional semifinal and final series format to determine a league champion.

“We argued it a little bit, battled it a little bit, thought of player safety, recovery time and that we have high-end junior athletes playing in a tournament that doesn’t need to be crammed into three days, but we’re doing it because majority rules,” Watson said, noting league governors voted to make the change.

“My coaching staff was not [in favour of the tournament]. I have some medical professionals that weren’t overly excited by it. But when you get the votes going that way and three of the five teams really push for it, there’s not much we can do.”

The South Okanagan Flames (7-6-3) and North Okanagan Reapers (6-9-1) are the third and fourth seeds, respectively.

Kamloops posted a perfect record (19-0, including regular season and playoffs) in 2023 and last year won its third straight league title after recording a 15-1 mark in regular-season action, with a plus-135 goal differential.

Watson said about 10 of his players graduated from the junior ranks after the 2024 campaign and the club entered 2025 expecting to take a step back.

“I won’t say hate, but there’s a lot of drive to kind of push us out of that top spot that we’ve had for the last couple years,” Venom runner Keaton Thibault said. “There’s a lot of teams kind of hunting for that and I think this year there’s more competition than ever in the league, so that could be a real possibility.”

The Venom are slated to play twice on Friday – at 10 a.m. against Kelowna and 8 p.m. versus North Okanagan.

Kamloops will wrap round-robin play against South Okanagan, a 4 p.m. start on Saturday.

The championship tilt is scheduled for 2 p.m. on Sunday.

Kamloops – which has claimed eight league championships since inception in 2008 — has suffered defeat in the provincial final in each of the last three seasons.

Venom runner Leland Vince said the goal is to reach the B.C. Junior B Tier 1 Lacrosse League championship series for a fourth consecutive year.

“I think our chances are pretty high,” Venom runner Leland Vince said.

“We’re a young team, for sure. The last couple of years, we’ve been very veteran heavy and that’s kind of changed now with all the graduating players. But with the young guys, they’re going to come into form and it’s playoffs. Anything can happen, right?”

by Marty Hastings

Underdog Venom, not fans of tournament championship format, aiming for fourth straight TOJLL title

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