Four former Whitby Warriors look to crack Canada roster for World Field Lacrosse Championships

By

Published April 19, 2023 at 11:23 am

Gold medal action from the 2014 FIL World Lacrosse Championships at Dick's Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, Colorado. Canada defeated the USA 8-5. Picture by Trevor Brown Photography

Four graduates of the Whitby Warriors lacrosse program are among 26 athletes still in contention for Canada’s 23-man final roster for the 2023 World Lacrosse Men’s Championship.

The 2023 Field Lacrosse World’s will take place in San Diego from June 21 to July 1, with Team Canada opening play against the defending champion United States on June 21 at Snapdragon Stadium.

Canada will compete in Pool A, made up of the five top-ranked teams, including USA, Haudenosaunee, Australia, and England. Canada, which captured gold in 2014, looks to improve on their 2018 silver medal finish from Israel.

Goalkeeper Brett Dobson and midfielder Dyson Williams are both from Oshawa and both are products of Whitby Minor Lacrosse. Midfielder Graydon Hogg also hails from Oshawa and honed his skills with Clarington Minor Lacrosse; while Port Perry’s Graeme Hossack – a returnee from the 2018 Worlds in Israel – came up through the Whitby system.

“We have a very strong group of men to choose from, which has made this an extremely difficult process,” said Team Canada GM Dan Carey. “There are a lot of deserving players that are not in our group of 26, and we thank everyone for their commitment to this point. We are looking forward to finalizing our roster of 23 players in the coming weeks.”

Familiar names from the 2018 Israel roster include Hossack, Wes Berg, Josh Byrne, Zach Currier, Curtis Dickson, Latrell Harris, Ryland Rees, Jeff Teat, Dillon Ward, Jake Withers and 41 year-old Brodie Merrill, an Orangeville native and captain of the NLL’s San Diego Seals who will be gunning for his fifth appearance at the world championships.

  • Dobson, 23, was a second team All-American at St. Bonaventure University and a member of Canada’s gold medal-winning squad at last year’s World Games in Birmingham, Alabama.
  • Hogg, 22, spent three years with the Whitby Warriors and led his University of Albany team last season in goals and points and was a conference all-star.
  • Hossack, 30, made the All-World team in Israel in 2018 and was a three-time NLL Defensive Player of the Year with the Rochester Knighthawks. Hossack won Minto Cups with Whitby in 2011 and 2013.
  • Williams, 23, is a 5x Ontario champion in box, a 4x provincial champ in field and a 4x national champ with Team Ontario. The Duke star, who scored 45 points for Brooklin last summer, is set to be the number one overall pick in the upcoming NLL draft.

Williams is also the son of lacrosse Hall of Fame inductee Shawn Williams – currently the coach of the NLL’s Las Vegas Desert Dogs – and the older brother of the late Tucker Williams, a rising lacrosse star who died of Burkitt’s Lymphoma in 2014 at the tender age of eight.

Tucker returned to the floor months after his diagnosis and scored three of the four goals in the championship game at the highest level of lacrosse in the province while the cancer ravaged his body.

His legacy lives on through the annual Braver Than Brave lacrosse tournament and Tucker Out campaign on behalf of paediatric lymphoma research at Sick Kids. Big brother Dyson, meanwhile, wears Tucker’s number 51 in his memory.

The final roster for the World Field Lacrosse Championships will be announced closer to the competition. The games will be broadcast on ESPN and TSN.

insauga's Editorial Standards and Policies advertising