This article originally appeared in the 2019 Yearbook Edition of the Ontario Lacrosse Magazine

This won’t come as welcome news to the rest of the cars on the highway but the Six Nations Rivermen aren’t taking their foot off the gas pedal. The Rivermen, who’ve won four Ontario titles since returning to the Senior “B” ranks in 2013 and captured their second President’s Cup in early September, figure to be right back in the fast lane again in 2020.

“We’ve been in the hunt ever since we brought the team back,” says Stew Monture, who’s been coaching since the Rivermen revived Senior “B” at Six Nations after a year’s hiatus following the dissolution of the former Mohawk Stars.

“We’re fairly successful in a very good league. Oakville is really good, Owen Sound is good. I love the passion they have and kudos to them. But we’re not going to change our attitude. We try to win every year and next year will be the same. The main thing we want to do is keep the cohesiveness between us, the (MSL) Chiefs and Six Nations lacrosse. It’s very important.”

And so was their 9-5 victory over the Akwesasne Bucks in the final of the national championship at Kahnawake, Quebec. It gave the Rivermen their first President’s Cup title since 2015, to go along with silvers in 2014 and 2017. The host team finished third, which meant that all three teams on the President’s Cup podium were Haudenosaunee-run.

“We just realized that after the medal presentations,” says Cap Bomberry, a cofounder of the team and its president for five years before stepping down and becoming an important part of the advisory board. “You can really make a big thing of that because we’re very proud of it.”

Monture said he didn’t use the situation as a heavy-handed motivational tool but emphasized that he was "super proud" of it. I told the guys before the last game, ‘This is a special opportunity. The Makers of the Game all meet in the finals; it’s not just for yourselves, but for your kids too.’”

The Rivermen (12-3) edged Oakville Titans (12-4) for the regular season title and had the league’s best road record with just one loss in seven games. Gates Abrams finished fifth in league scoring with 48 points and second in goals with 25, while he and teammate Wayne VanEvery led the Senior “B” series in game-winning goals. Goalie Warren Hill, who led the President’s Cup in goals against, finished second in Ontario Series Lacrosse at 6.17 per game behind Oakville’s Craig Wende (5.71) but his ten wins were tops in the league.

After beating the Owen Sound North Stars, then Oakville Titans, in best-of-five playoff series —both in four games—the Rivermen advanced to the President’s Cup and after six games had already earned their berth in the final with five wins and a tie, when they met Akwesasne in the final preliminary game. Akwesasne beat the Rivermen 14-6, spiking their rematch in the final with a little extra incentive for Six Nations.

Six Nations took a 6-2 lead through the first period of the final and rode steady defence and Hill’s outstanding 29-save goaltending performance to the 9-5 victory. Toronto Rock star Johnny Powless had three goals and a pair of assists, Abrams a pair of goals and an assist and singles went to VanEvery, Zed Williams, Marshall Powless, Adam Powell and 36-year-old captain Rayce Vyse, who was in his second season back with the team after a six-year absence from lacrosse.

Wlliams led the team with 23 points in the eight-game tournament but that he finished just 13th among all scorers, tells a big part of the 2019 Rivermen story. Six Nations spread their scoring around and, especially in the latter parts of the Ontario playoffs, had to draw upon the quality of their depth to keep winning (12-2-1 in their final 15 games). Williams personifies a number of factors that helped shape the Rivermen’s extraordinary season. He’s a headliner with the National Lacrosse League’s Georgia Swarm and chose the Rivermen as his summer team, in large part so he could play with his brothers Sherman, Jon and Zach.

The Williams are one of four sets of brothers on the team. Toronto Rock’s Johnny Powless (Marshall), Warren Hill (Wayne), and Rayce Vyse (Holden) also had brothers on the team.

“People talk about teams being a family but we really are a family team,” Monture laughs. “There are a lot of blood relations. Cap Bomberry is kind of the grandfather of the team and I think he’s related to half the roster.”

“After we picked the team it clicked that this is one of the first times the majority of our team was native players,” says Jeff Powless, who was a goalie in the Rivermen’s early years and is now the club’s GM and president. “We didn’t start out to be like that, it’s just the way it turned out.”

The Rivermen had flat-out talent with a number of NLL players, including Warren Hill, deciding to suit up, but it was the quality of their depth which helped them survive a very rough patch after the opening game of the Ontario playoffs, which they lost to Owen Sound. A brawl, reminiscent of an earlier regular-season game, cost them several players to multiple-game suspension and they had to rely upon players who hadn’t seen as much floor time, as well as callups from the Junior “B” Six Nations Rebels.

Monture says that enduring the suspensions gave them experience at prevailing over some adversity “and I think that’s what makes a team strong coming down the pipe.”

Rayce Vyse agreed and adds, “There were guys who were ready to play. It’s a team with a lot of character. Everybody bought in, even before the season started. “We had a bunch of guys who came back from the NLL and they worked really hard. They didn’t demand anything, which was just awesome to see. Johnny was amazing and Zed is an unbelievable talent. He probably won a couple of games for us single-handedly.”

He says that a month before training camp opened a large number of players worked out as a group in non-compulsory training at a fitness gym in nearby Caledonia, which set an early tone of togetherness. Some players who had other options may have chosen the Rivermen because of the shorter schedule which comprises mostly weekend games, while others were drawn by familiarity. But, says Bomberry, individual motivations were brought under the larger umbrella of team unity.

“It was an opportunity to play with my brother, but also to play with my friends,” 27-year-old Hill said. “We were a pretty young team, and are close in age, so a lot of us grew up playing together. We were tightknit group right from the get-go and there was a lot of family. Even the guys from out of town had played with us before.”

Monture says Hill advanced his level play significantly this year, letting the game come to him, and the goaltender says that should pay dividends in the NLL too. It’s too early, Powless says, to know how many players will return next year. Some may graduate to the Chiefs, but a solid core is expected back in the lineup. And Monture promises they’ll be pushing for another OLA title. For now the Rivermen are relishing what they’d done.

“We got the right guys together,” Monture says. ‘”We had a lot of professionals, not necessarily in where they play the game, but in the way they carried themselves.”

Written by Steve Milton