Trent Clinches First Place in CUFLA Central With Week 5 Win Over Nipissing

Things move quickly in a shortened season. For example, just four weeks into the 2021 CUFLA season, the Trent Excalibur have clinched first place in the Central Division.

Trent 11, Nipissing 4
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Nipissing Athletics story
Trent downed Nipissing 11-4 on the road in North Bay in Week 4 to improve to 4-0 while the Lakers fall to 3-2. With each team able to play only six games this fall because of the impact of Covid-19, and Trent having swept Nipissing in the home-and-home season series, the Lakers can't catch the Excalibur for first even if they were to beat Laurentian in their final game while Trent lost to Laurentian and Toronto to close out the season. 

It took over 25 minutes for anyone to score on a rainy afternoon in North Bay, but then Jack MacAlpine, Dominic Millman and Gutch Salinas connected in a 55-second span to stake Trent to a 3-0 lead that they stretched to 6-1 by half time. 

Nipissing is assured a berth in the Baggataway Cup as the host. As the Central's first-place team, Trent will play Toronto in the playoffs to join the Lakers. The Varsity Blues will finish third; while they could wind up tied with Nipissing for second or Laurentian for third, they lose the tiebreaker to the Lakers and win the tiebreaker with the Voyageurs because of sweeps occurring in both those season series. 

Toronto 15, Laurentian 0
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Sam Lehman earned the rare lacrosse shutout as Toronto downed Laurentian in the only other CUFLA Central game of Week 4. Davis Bottomley and Aidan Guld each had hat tricks while Darren Elliott joined Bottomley as the game's leading scorer by tallying 2 goals and 2 assists.