2 days ago
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Jamaica will close out their campaign at the 2025 World Lacrosse Men’s U20 Championships when they take on England at the Gongcheonpo Training Center in South Korea in the seventh-place match.
The fixture will be a rematch of the opening game in Pool C where Jamaica lost out to England in a tightly-contested 14-11 affair.
The winners of the match will place seventh at the Lacrosse U20 Championships with the losers ending in eighth.
Regardless of the result, the campaign stands as a historic milestone for the U20 Lacrosse national programme as they had qualified for the quarterfinals for the first time in the island’s history.
However, they were defeated 21-1 by Canada in the final eight on Thursday, which was followed by 11-5 defeat at the hands of Japan in the resulting playoff match yesterday.
Jamaica had actually started the better of the two teams as they took a close 2-1 lead over Japan in the first quarter.
They maintained their one-point lead heading into the half time, as both teams played out a 1-1 scoreline in the second quarter.
The Japanese squad were in charge of the match in the last two quarters as they took the lead after smashing Jamaica 4-0 in the third quarter, and extended their lead with a 5-2 scoreline in the final quarter.
Elias Shadeed-McLaughlin and Stone Evans both scored two points each for Jamaica while D’Andrae McKenzie score the remaining point.
Japan’s charge was spearheaded by Rentaro Okuyama with a game-high five points.
Jamaica will now face England for the second time this tournament and will be more confident having seen improvements over their several games played.
Head coach Wilson said after their first meeting that the team was not at its best as they played England only a day after the team landed in South Korea.
“Getting here was a big trip and then having the England game a day and a half after getting here was difficult and we probably didn’t play our best,” he explained.
“But since then, we feel like we’ve been steadily improving so we were expected to give our best efforts against Ireland and we played our best and the guys executed and got it done.”
England will enter the match on the back off a 15-11 defeat to Puerto Rico in their playoff match.
They were also hammered 26-0 in an one-sided quarterfinals against defending champions the United States and will be looking to end their campaign with a win.
English (US) ·