The Barrie Lakeshores reached into Guelph to select Reed Kurtz as the first overall pick in last weekend’s Ontario Junior A Lacrosse League midget entry draft.
“I’m pretty pumped,” Kurtz said as he sat at the West End arena after playing a high school hockey game with the Bishop Macdonell Celtics. “It’s an honour to be drafted first overall and I’m looking forward to it.”
He admitted to being a little surprised at being selected first overall.
“Between me and Justin Sykes (of Oakville) and a few other guys, I wasn’t sure who was going to go first, but it worked out and I ended up going first and I’m pretty proud about that.”
The Lakeshores had finished 11th in the 11-team league last season with a 3-16-1 record and Kurtz isn’t sure if he’ll play in Barrie this year.
“It all depends on whether we can make it all work out with school and work and everything,” he said. “We’ve got to see if it can work and if not, we’ll go from there.”
The league is basically a weekend league so things might work out. Of Barrie’s 20 games last season,15 were on weekends.
Kurtz played with the Guelph Minor Lacrosse Association’s midget Regals last summer and was a member of the Team Ontario midget squad that finished as silver medalists in the national championship tournament at Whitby in August. He also played three games as a call-up for the Guelph Regals of the Ontario junior B league and collected four goals and five assists.
“We were a good team,” Kurtz said of Guelph’s midget squad. “We finished fourth in the province last year. Our coaches have been working us all throughout our whole career. We’ve had the same coaches since we were young and they’ve been getting us prepared. I think a lot of the team is going to be ready to step up to that junior level.”
Being selected first in the junior A draft was the latest lacrosse accomplishment for Kurtz. Last fall he was named the winner of the Ontario Lacrosse Association’s Jamieson Kuhlmann Award that is given to a midget for his proficiency in field lacrosse, outstanding achievement in citizenship and high standards in academics or his/her chosen profession.
“I thought it was a pretty good accomplishment and I was honoured that I was fortunate to win that.”
A Grade 11 student at Bishop Mac, Kurtz had a 94 per cent midterm average for the semester that the students start writing exams for next week. And that was achieved while playing hockey for the school and in the Toronto Rock’s elite lacrosse league every Monday.
“I’m looking to keep that up and stay in the 90 average,” he said. “It’s just all time management. You’ve got to find time. In school is the most important. If you get your work done in school and get all that studying in during school hours, it’s good and you’ve got a lot of time to work on your sports outside of school.”
If Reed plays in Barrie this summer, he’ll likely play against older brother Tye who was one of the leading scorers with the Kitchener-Waterloo Braves. In a couple of years they’ll be teammates in field lacrosse at the University of Delaware.
“Me and my brother have both committed to going there,” said Reed, who’ll turn 17 in March. “He’s heading there this summer and I’m going there next summer.
“We wanted to go to school together and we wanted to play together. It’s a great school with great academics there and the lacrosse team is building and I think they’re going to be a competitor in the next couple of years.”
