Junior Locos suffered an 8-5 defeat at the hands of visiting Strathmore Venoms on Saturday, May 30 as a result of reckless play leading to excessive penalties, which allowed the Venoms to score at ease.
As the game started, the joint Lacombe-Ponoka team appeared to have a stable game plan, able to maintain possession and move the ball around easily. This resulted in an early score by Andrew Kooiman in the third minute of the first period, but this turned out to be the only time they had a lead in the game. The visitors did not take long to recover from the impact and scored twice in quick succession midway through the first period taking advantage of two Locos players being sidelined by penalties.
As the second period started, Venom kept on attacking the Locos net and found two more easy goals to open the lead. Then it was the turn of the visitors to incur penalties and Locos made good use of the period when Venom was shorthanded. Kooiman scored once more, to be followed by Sean Reed, making it 4-3. The Strathmore team didn’t let Locos boys to equalize, however, and when they scored once more, the second period ended 5-3.
Early in the third, Cooper Smyth put the next number on the scoreboard making it 5-4, but Venom kept the gap at two points by responding quickly: 6-4. About eight minutes from the end of regulation, Carson Barnes scored once again for Locos but Venom responded with two more sealing the score at 8-5.
For their second game of the weekend. Locos travelled to Red Deer on Sunday and lost to Renegades with a score of 16-6.
The next home game for Locos is on Saturday, June 13 at 6:30 p.m. at the Ponoka Culture and Recreation Complex.