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Sports

Duluth Wildcats Win Lacrosse Title in First Season

Wildcats under-15 team lost only one game all year and they avenged that setback with a 5-4 win over Mill Creek in overtime in the league championship game.

Expectations for a first-year team in any sport -- particularly one with a rookie head coach who learned the game by reading a book -- are generally poor at best. But don't tell that to Head Coach Richard Middleton and his Duluth Wildcats under-15 lacrosse team, champions of the Gwinnett Youth Lacrosse Association.

It was a storybook season for the Wildcats who finished the year with an incredible 13-1 record and a 5-4 win over Mill Creek to avenge their only loss of the season in the championship game.

"It's one of those things that would have been very hard to believe," Middleton said Friday. "Not doubting the boys ability at all, but most of our players had one year or less experience playing lacrosse."

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Duluth played in the Cherokee Division against more experienced teams like Brookwood, Mill Creek, Greater Atlanta Christian, North Gwinnett and Wesleyan. But Duluth's experience, or lack thereof, never entered into it as they rolled along like a veteran team.

Middleton, who had coached baseball in the Duluth Park and Recreation League, for several years said it was his son Ryan who got him involved in the sport.

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"He was getting a little bored with baseball and wanted to try lacrosse," Middleton said. "A friend (Henry Autler) played lacrosse in high school in New York and he kind of brought us along."

Middleton and his assistant coaches in Jeff Pax, Victor Foster and Darryl Dacruz, stressed fundamentals from Day 1. "I made them promise early on that they would work on the basics until they got sick of them and they did," he said.

The Wildcats may have gotten sick of the fundamentals but they obviously served them well as they breezed through an almost unbelievably successful season.

When they reached the championship game, the opponent was Mill Creek, the only team to beat the Wildcats all year. Locked in a 4-4 deadlock, the two teams entered overtime and 28 seconds into sudden death, Ryan Middleton scooped up the ball, raced toward the goal and delivered the game winner.

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