adam
03-02-2005, 08:51 AM
FROM INSIDE LACROSSE MAGAZINE:
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Waiting in the Wings
Over the last two years Lewis Ratcliff has put up ridiculous numbers in the WLA and the NLL. Yet he wasn’t on Team Canada for the Heritage Cup and he isn’t even considered the No. 2 offensive option for defending champ Calgary. However, after another eye-opening summer, it looks like the 23-year-old isn’t going to be playing second fiddle anymore
By Ty Pilson (Inside Lacrosse Magazine, Dec. 15, 2004)
Lewis Ratcliff admits he was a little disappointed when he wasn’t named to Team Canada’s roster for the Heritage Cup in October.
It’s hard to blame him. There’s no arguing that over the past to seasons, the Victoria, B.C. resident has put together a resume good enough to have earned a place on the bench alongside the country’s top players wearing the Red and White.
Most recently, the 23-year-old led the Calgary Roughnecks in scoring through the regular season and playoffs en route to the team’s Champion’s Cup win in May and then followed that up by leading the Western Lacrosse Association in scoring with 104 points (47G, 57A) as he spearheaded the Victoria Shamrocks run to the Senior A Mann Cup national box lacrosse championship series (they lost to the Peterborough Lakers) this summer.
Still, Ratcliff understands why he was left off the team given the guys who got the nod ahead of him. The same guys who are household names in the lacrosse world. And the same guys who have been the NLL’s biggest stars for quite some time.
“I was disappointed, I’ll be honest,” says the offensively gifted lefty. “But look at the four guys that were there playing in my position. You have [Colin] Doyle, [Gary] Gait, [John] Grant and John Tavares ... who are you going to put me in front of? I mean, let’s be honest. You have guys like Shawn Williams and Derek Malawsky that didn’t make the team either so I can’t be too upset or anything. Sure, I wanted to be there but what do you do? Maybe in a couple of years I’ll hopefully be there if I keep working hard.”
Maybe? Couple of years? If he continues at his current pace, he should be there this winter.
Calgary drafted Ratcliff in the fourth round (49th overall) in 2001. Prior to the draft that year, Ratcliff led the B.C. Junior A league in scoring with 66 goals and 61 assists in 24 games while playing with Victoria. In his NLL rookie season in 2003, Ratcliff scored 24 goals and 21 assists in 14 games to earn a spot on the All-Rookie Team.
Up to that point, Ratcliff had looked like a good investment who was living up his hype. But he hadn’t exactly set the lacrosse world on its ear.
That summer, in his first WLA Sr. A season, he finished a very impressive fifth in league scoring with 45 goals and 40 assists on a Shamrocks team loaded with offensive weapons. Victoria went on to win the Mann Cup, beating the Brampton Excelsiors as Ratcliff was named the WLA Rookie of the Year.
Heading into the 2004 NLL season, the Riggers were hoping Ratcliff’s burgeoning play and increasingly hot stick would carry over from the summer. But they weren’t hanging their entire season on him. With a high-octane attack that included Tracey Kelusky, Kaleb Toth, Ted Dowling and veteran Jason Wulder, Ratcliff was slotted near the bottom of their offensive depth chart.
But it didn’t stay that way for long.
Ratcliff led the Riggers in scoring with 34 goals and 37 assists in 16 games. He tied for 10th in the league in goals and finished fourth with 13 power-play markers.
In the playoffs, he again led the Riggers on the score sheet with six goals and 11 assists in three games and finished second overall in postseason production behind only Tavares.
In just two short years, Ratcliff has gone from up-and-comer to one of the game’s money players with a Mann Cup and a Champion’s Cup to his credit.
Now he could be poised to take a step up with those four guys from Team Canada.
“It’s been unreal, really,” he says. “From my third year of Junior on—even the first year in Calgary—it’s been awesome.
“Hopefully, I can keep this up and keep it going.”
RATCLIFF was born in London, England and his family moved to Victoria when he was seven. He didn’t start playing lacrosse until he was 12—hadn’t even heard of it actually. But fortunately his mom told him about it and he was looking for a sport to fill up his summers when he couldn’t play hockey.
Once he picked up a lacrosse stick, he immersed himself in the sport right away and hasn’t looked back.
“I was hooked right away,” he says. “I got the hang of it pretty quickly. I think it helped with all the other sports I’d played. I was a faster learner at lacrosse than I was at most sports, which I think helped me fall in love with it. I didn’t really have growing pains when I first got into it.”
Along with box lacrosse, Ratcliff embraced the field game and impressed the right people with his play, becoming one of a growing number of Canadians who play NCAA ball in the U.S. Like Ben Prepchuk and Blaine Manning before him, Ratcliff put up big numbers right away at Division I Radford in Virginia, finishing 15th in the country with 33 goals as a freshman attackman in 2000. When Radford announced it was cutting its program, Ratcliff transferred to Ohio State, where he put up 14 goals and eight assists in ‘01.
But after drafting the young scorer the following fall, Calgary coach Chris Hall convinced Ratcliff to play for the NLL team and pursue the rest of his education back in Canada. Feeling a little homesick, Ratcliff agreed that was the best avenue for him to travel.
“I don’t regret anything,” he says. “Coming to Calgary was probably the best decision I ever made. I’d prefer to be close to home on the West Coast and everything in Calgary has worked out great.”
“I still love playing field. I really enjoyed playing college ball. Just having that experience of living in Columbus and going to school with 55,000 kids and going to football games there—the whole experience was great.”
A LARGE part of Ratcliff’s success can be attributed to the phenomenal physical shape he keeps himself in. At 6-1, 215 lbs., he’s built like a rock. He works out religiously and runs every morning, creating an incredible physique that helps make room for himself on the floor.
“He’s worked hard,” says Vancouver Ravens coach Walt Christianson, who has coached him with the Sr. A Shamrocks and as an assistant coach with Calgary during Ratcliff’s rookie NLL season. “He’s also worked hard physically. He’s spent a lot of time in the gym, so he’s very strong and he’s very fast and you add that to the fact that he’s a natural shooter and he’s the whole package.”
Echoes Hall: “He works incredibly hard to keep himself in tip-top condition. That has really helped him become a superb player. He’s taken it upon himself to work really hard—on the floor and off—to become the player he is.”
Christianson admits even he’s been surprised at how quickly Ratcliff has come along over the past two seasons.
“And he’s still just learning to play, really,” says Christianson. “He’s only going to get better. I mean, he’s only 23. As he gets older he’s going to get better and if he keeps working at his game, I think he can be one of the top three or four players in the league.”
Although good coaching and mentoring have helped bring Ratcliff to this point, Christianson says Ratcliff’s natural ability to put the ball in the net can’t be taught.
“He’s a natural shooter,” he says. “There aren’t many natural shooters around. Guys that when they shoot the puck, shoot the ball, shoot the basketball, it’s going to go in. He’s a natural.
“Guys like John Tavares and John Grant, Jr. are natural shooters and that’s what Lewis is. He’s a shooter, a sniper so to speak. So every time he shoots the ball, there’s a 50-50 chance it’ll go in no matter where he’s shooting from, what angle or if he’s off-balance.”
THERE’S NO arguing that this past summer was when Ratcliff truly came into his own. The Shamrocks were much younger than in years past and lacked many of the big names that have dominated their roster. So Ratcliff got most of the attention from opposing defenses.
“It was the perfect opportunity for me,” he says. “We had a lot of young guys and rookies and I was kind of like the second-year veteran on the team. I had some of the most experience on the team even though it was only my second year, so a lot of the guys looked to me to take the ball and I’m more than willing to do that. It was a great chance to get the ball a lot and I made the most of it.”
The attention focused on Ratcliff intensified in the playoffs and through to the Mann Cup, where despite being pounded and double-teamed, Ratcliff still produced offensively.
That, says Christianson, is the sign of a great player.
“A lot of players would go away under those circumstances,” he says. “They can’t handle all the extra attention and double teams, but he accepted the responsibility and rose to the occasion. He’s a tough player.”
That experience served to elevate his game and should make him that much more dangerous this season with Calgary.
“Especially in the Mann Cup with how good Peterborough’s defense was, they were really keying on me so I had to work through it,” he says. “It helped me improve my off-ball play and just being able to find ways to score goals against a defense like that, which overall was probably better than any defense I played against in the WLA.”
Sometimes when the pressure was poured on and Ratcliff couldn’t score a goal, he had to find other ways to contribute on the floor. That’s helped make him a more complete player, as he’s rounded out his game to make himself more of a threat.
Perfect timing. With the departure of Roughnecks’ all-star forward Dowling, a fellow southpaw, Ratcliff knows he will see a lot more balls this season with the Riggers.
“Being pretty much the No. 1 option now over on the left is great,” he says. “And, with the amount of double and triple teams Tracey and Kaleb take over there, I should have lots of room this season.”
That might not be all he’ll have this season.
“I think he’s going to gain more respect this year,” Christianson says. “He’s such a good player that teams are going to have to give him more respect and be aware of him. To some extent, it’s good for him to be in Calgary. People are going to look at Tracey, look at Kaleb and then look at Lewis as No. 3.”
Ratcliff welcomes the challenge and extra attention and says he’s ready for this to be his breakout year in the NLL.
“My confidence is sky high right now,” he says. “I know what I can do and what I’m capable of. I’ve gotten better every year but I definitely want to keep improving and take it to the next level. I think I was just outside the Top 10 in scoring last year so I’d like to break into that upper 10 players. I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself, though. I just want to keep improving and not take a step back. I want to get better and if that means scoring 40 goals or getting 60 assists it really doesn’t matter as long as I’m playing well and we’re winning.”
Sounds like Ratcliff won’t be facing much more disappointment any time soon.
Ty Pilson covers the Roughnecks and the NLL for The Calgary Sun.
FROM INSIDE LACROSSE MAGAZINE:
subscription information @ www.insidelacrosse.com (http://www.insidelacrosse.com)
subscription information @ www.insidelacrosse.com (http://www.insidelacrosse.com)
Waiting in the Wings
Over the last two years Lewis Ratcliff has put up ridiculous numbers in the WLA and the NLL. Yet he wasn’t on Team Canada for the Heritage Cup and he isn’t even considered the No. 2 offensive option for defending champ Calgary. However, after another eye-opening summer, it looks like the 23-year-old isn’t going to be playing second fiddle anymore
By Ty Pilson (Inside Lacrosse Magazine, Dec. 15, 2004)
Lewis Ratcliff admits he was a little disappointed when he wasn’t named to Team Canada’s roster for the Heritage Cup in October.
It’s hard to blame him. There’s no arguing that over the past to seasons, the Victoria, B.C. resident has put together a resume good enough to have earned a place on the bench alongside the country’s top players wearing the Red and White.
Most recently, the 23-year-old led the Calgary Roughnecks in scoring through the regular season and playoffs en route to the team’s Champion’s Cup win in May and then followed that up by leading the Western Lacrosse Association in scoring with 104 points (47G, 57A) as he spearheaded the Victoria Shamrocks run to the Senior A Mann Cup national box lacrosse championship series (they lost to the Peterborough Lakers) this summer.
Still, Ratcliff understands why he was left off the team given the guys who got the nod ahead of him. The same guys who are household names in the lacrosse world. And the same guys who have been the NLL’s biggest stars for quite some time.
“I was disappointed, I’ll be honest,” says the offensively gifted lefty. “But look at the four guys that were there playing in my position. You have [Colin] Doyle, [Gary] Gait, [John] Grant and John Tavares ... who are you going to put me in front of? I mean, let’s be honest. You have guys like Shawn Williams and Derek Malawsky that didn’t make the team either so I can’t be too upset or anything. Sure, I wanted to be there but what do you do? Maybe in a couple of years I’ll hopefully be there if I keep working hard.”
Maybe? Couple of years? If he continues at his current pace, he should be there this winter.
Calgary drafted Ratcliff in the fourth round (49th overall) in 2001. Prior to the draft that year, Ratcliff led the B.C. Junior A league in scoring with 66 goals and 61 assists in 24 games while playing with Victoria. In his NLL rookie season in 2003, Ratcliff scored 24 goals and 21 assists in 14 games to earn a spot on the All-Rookie Team.
Up to that point, Ratcliff had looked like a good investment who was living up his hype. But he hadn’t exactly set the lacrosse world on its ear.
That summer, in his first WLA Sr. A season, he finished a very impressive fifth in league scoring with 45 goals and 40 assists on a Shamrocks team loaded with offensive weapons. Victoria went on to win the Mann Cup, beating the Brampton Excelsiors as Ratcliff was named the WLA Rookie of the Year.
Heading into the 2004 NLL season, the Riggers were hoping Ratcliff’s burgeoning play and increasingly hot stick would carry over from the summer. But they weren’t hanging their entire season on him. With a high-octane attack that included Tracey Kelusky, Kaleb Toth, Ted Dowling and veteran Jason Wulder, Ratcliff was slotted near the bottom of their offensive depth chart.
But it didn’t stay that way for long.
Ratcliff led the Riggers in scoring with 34 goals and 37 assists in 16 games. He tied for 10th in the league in goals and finished fourth with 13 power-play markers.
In the playoffs, he again led the Riggers on the score sheet with six goals and 11 assists in three games and finished second overall in postseason production behind only Tavares.
In just two short years, Ratcliff has gone from up-and-comer to one of the game’s money players with a Mann Cup and a Champion’s Cup to his credit.
Now he could be poised to take a step up with those four guys from Team Canada.
“It’s been unreal, really,” he says. “From my third year of Junior on—even the first year in Calgary—it’s been awesome.
“Hopefully, I can keep this up and keep it going.”
RATCLIFF was born in London, England and his family moved to Victoria when he was seven. He didn’t start playing lacrosse until he was 12—hadn’t even heard of it actually. But fortunately his mom told him about it and he was looking for a sport to fill up his summers when he couldn’t play hockey.
Once he picked up a lacrosse stick, he immersed himself in the sport right away and hasn’t looked back.
“I was hooked right away,” he says. “I got the hang of it pretty quickly. I think it helped with all the other sports I’d played. I was a faster learner at lacrosse than I was at most sports, which I think helped me fall in love with it. I didn’t really have growing pains when I first got into it.”
Along with box lacrosse, Ratcliff embraced the field game and impressed the right people with his play, becoming one of a growing number of Canadians who play NCAA ball in the U.S. Like Ben Prepchuk and Blaine Manning before him, Ratcliff put up big numbers right away at Division I Radford in Virginia, finishing 15th in the country with 33 goals as a freshman attackman in 2000. When Radford announced it was cutting its program, Ratcliff transferred to Ohio State, where he put up 14 goals and eight assists in ‘01.
But after drafting the young scorer the following fall, Calgary coach Chris Hall convinced Ratcliff to play for the NLL team and pursue the rest of his education back in Canada. Feeling a little homesick, Ratcliff agreed that was the best avenue for him to travel.
“I don’t regret anything,” he says. “Coming to Calgary was probably the best decision I ever made. I’d prefer to be close to home on the West Coast and everything in Calgary has worked out great.”
“I still love playing field. I really enjoyed playing college ball. Just having that experience of living in Columbus and going to school with 55,000 kids and going to football games there—the whole experience was great.”
A LARGE part of Ratcliff’s success can be attributed to the phenomenal physical shape he keeps himself in. At 6-1, 215 lbs., he’s built like a rock. He works out religiously and runs every morning, creating an incredible physique that helps make room for himself on the floor.
“He’s worked hard,” says Vancouver Ravens coach Walt Christianson, who has coached him with the Sr. A Shamrocks and as an assistant coach with Calgary during Ratcliff’s rookie NLL season. “He’s also worked hard physically. He’s spent a lot of time in the gym, so he’s very strong and he’s very fast and you add that to the fact that he’s a natural shooter and he’s the whole package.”
Echoes Hall: “He works incredibly hard to keep himself in tip-top condition. That has really helped him become a superb player. He’s taken it upon himself to work really hard—on the floor and off—to become the player he is.”
Christianson admits even he’s been surprised at how quickly Ratcliff has come along over the past two seasons.
“And he’s still just learning to play, really,” says Christianson. “He’s only going to get better. I mean, he’s only 23. As he gets older he’s going to get better and if he keeps working at his game, I think he can be one of the top three or four players in the league.”
Although good coaching and mentoring have helped bring Ratcliff to this point, Christianson says Ratcliff’s natural ability to put the ball in the net can’t be taught.
“He’s a natural shooter,” he says. “There aren’t many natural shooters around. Guys that when they shoot the puck, shoot the ball, shoot the basketball, it’s going to go in. He’s a natural.
“Guys like John Tavares and John Grant, Jr. are natural shooters and that’s what Lewis is. He’s a shooter, a sniper so to speak. So every time he shoots the ball, there’s a 50-50 chance it’ll go in no matter where he’s shooting from, what angle or if he’s off-balance.”
THERE’S NO arguing that this past summer was when Ratcliff truly came into his own. The Shamrocks were much younger than in years past and lacked many of the big names that have dominated their roster. So Ratcliff got most of the attention from opposing defenses.
“It was the perfect opportunity for me,” he says. “We had a lot of young guys and rookies and I was kind of like the second-year veteran on the team. I had some of the most experience on the team even though it was only my second year, so a lot of the guys looked to me to take the ball and I’m more than willing to do that. It was a great chance to get the ball a lot and I made the most of it.”
The attention focused on Ratcliff intensified in the playoffs and through to the Mann Cup, where despite being pounded and double-teamed, Ratcliff still produced offensively.
That, says Christianson, is the sign of a great player.
“A lot of players would go away under those circumstances,” he says. “They can’t handle all the extra attention and double teams, but he accepted the responsibility and rose to the occasion. He’s a tough player.”
That experience served to elevate his game and should make him that much more dangerous this season with Calgary.
“Especially in the Mann Cup with how good Peterborough’s defense was, they were really keying on me so I had to work through it,” he says. “It helped me improve my off-ball play and just being able to find ways to score goals against a defense like that, which overall was probably better than any defense I played against in the WLA.”
Sometimes when the pressure was poured on and Ratcliff couldn’t score a goal, he had to find other ways to contribute on the floor. That’s helped make him a more complete player, as he’s rounded out his game to make himself more of a threat.
Perfect timing. With the departure of Roughnecks’ all-star forward Dowling, a fellow southpaw, Ratcliff knows he will see a lot more balls this season with the Riggers.
“Being pretty much the No. 1 option now over on the left is great,” he says. “And, with the amount of double and triple teams Tracey and Kaleb take over there, I should have lots of room this season.”
That might not be all he’ll have this season.
“I think he’s going to gain more respect this year,” Christianson says. “He’s such a good player that teams are going to have to give him more respect and be aware of him. To some extent, it’s good for him to be in Calgary. People are going to look at Tracey, look at Kaleb and then look at Lewis as No. 3.”
Ratcliff welcomes the challenge and extra attention and says he’s ready for this to be his breakout year in the NLL.
“My confidence is sky high right now,” he says. “I know what I can do and what I’m capable of. I’ve gotten better every year but I definitely want to keep improving and take it to the next level. I think I was just outside the Top 10 in scoring last year so I’d like to break into that upper 10 players. I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself, though. I just want to keep improving and not take a step back. I want to get better and if that means scoring 40 goals or getting 60 assists it really doesn’t matter as long as I’m playing well and we’re winning.”
Sounds like Ratcliff won’t be facing much more disappointment any time soon.
Ty Pilson covers the Roughnecks and the NLL for The Calgary Sun.
FROM INSIDE LACROSSE MAGAZINE:
subscription information @ www.insidelacrosse.com (http://www.insidelacrosse.com)