Since he was picked by the Nanaimo Timbermen in the Western Lacrosse Association draft last week, Jeremy Roe has been looking forward to lining up alongside his older brother on the T-Men defence.
Jeremy was taken 25th overall in the fourth round of the WLA draft last Wednesday, and if he cracks the senior lacrosse team’s roster this summer, he will suit up beside his brother, Tyson, a two-year veteran of the team.
“I got to play with him one year in junior, so it will be exciting to do that again,” Jeremy said. “That’s why I was wanting to go to Nanaimo, and the fact that I had been there for the last five years.
“It was fun playing with him in junior. It was my first year playing defence, so now that I’m used to playing defence, it will be exciting.”
Standing 6-foot-5 and 225 pounds, Jeremy Roe played three full seasons for the junior A T-Men, as well as two games as a call-up from intermediate in 2012. He finished his BCJALL career with 53 games played, 39 points on 11 goals and 28 assists, and 16 penalty minutes. He served as the team captain in 2015.
It’s not unusual for the senior T-Men to draft players from the junior team, so Jeremy wasn’t surprised to be drafted there, although he knew he was on the radar of some other teams.
“I went up to a few practices [with the senior T-Men] last year, the year before, and the year before that,” he pointed out. “I know a lot of the guys, and I’m excited to get to know the guys I don’t know already. And it will be cool to play for Kaleb [head coach Toth]; he’s a guy I grew up watching, and one of the best players of all time.”
Roe feels positive about being able to crack the senior team’s lineup this summer.
“I’ve been training pretty hard over the offseason, so hopefully my odds are pretty good,” he said.
With the junior A Timbermen out of the playoff hunt last summer, Roe was traded to the Brampton Excelsiors of the Ontario Junior A Lacrosse League. He played four regular-season and four playoff games with the Excelsior.
“That was a good experience,” he said. “I felt like junior out there is a lot faster than it is here, so that helped me get used to what I’ll be playing in senior. It was really good to go out there.”
Roe knew that, as a highly regarded player coming out of junior, he was likely to be drafted last week, but hadn’t given much thought to what position he might be taken in.
“I knew there were a lot of good players coming out of junior this year,” he said. “You don’t know where you might go; you just want to be drafted.”
Roe wasn’t the only player of interest to Cowichan Valley sports fans to be drafted last week.
Picked just two spots ahead of Roe was another former Cowichan Valley Lacrosse Association player, DJ Saari, whom the Maple Ridge Burrards grabbed from the junior New Westminster Salmonbellies. Like Roe, Saari played three full seasons in the BCJALL, as well as two games as an intermediate call-up. In 56 career games with Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam, Nanaimo and New Westminster, Saari scored one goal, assisted three more, and racked up 127 minutes in penalties.
Former Kerry Park Islanders forward Cody Short was picked, like Roe, by the senior A Timbermen from the junior A Timbermen in the eighth round. Short, who played hockey with the Isles from 2012 to 2015, spent two seasons with the junior T-Men, compiling 60 points on 25 goals and 35 assists over 38 games.