Fans heading to the senior Adanacs season opener tonight at the Poirier Sport and Leisure Complex may want to pick up a program.
There’s no shortage of new faces, both behind the bench and on the floor as the Western Lacrosse Association team looks to improve on its five wins and 13 losses last season.
Bob Bell is the team’s new coach, one of three new bench bosses in the league.
Bell comes to the Adanacs after working as an assistant for the Langley Thunder last year. Before that he was the head coach of the Port Coquitlam Saints of the BCJALL following several years of success guiding that organization’s intermediate team that culminated in a provincial championship in 2014.
Bell’s assistant will be his former boss in Langley, Shaun Springett.
Prior to heading the Thunder, Springett had success at the junior level in Coquitlam, New West and Delta, where he was named the BCJALL’s coach of the year in 2012.
They’ll be in charge of a team comprised of proven veterans like Matt Delmonico, Mike Krgovich, Coady Adamson and Brian Gillis who will be pushed newcomers like Sam De Groot and Jeremy Bosher.
De Groot was the second pick overall in last February’s WLA draft, but Adanacs’ general manager Mike Petrie said the former PoCo Saint may have been the best two-way player available. He scored 25 goals and added 26 assists in 17 games in his last year of junior.
Bosher was a star in junior with the New West Salmonbellies where he amassed 224 points in 59 career games. The Adanacs plucked him late in the draft’s second around, another steal according to Petrie, who had the right-handed forward ranked between eighth and tenth overall.
In the defensive end, the Adanacs believe they have a goalie of the future in Andrew Gallant, whom they selected from the PoCo Saints with their second pick in the draft’s first round.
Game time is 7 p.m. It will be preceeded by a tribute to longtime Adanac icon, Les Wingrove, who passed away last April.
