Bellies Make Changes

As with most teams or organizations following the season, changes are often made for various reasons and the most recent I have heard of is the change involving the defending WLA Champions New Westminster Senior Salmonbellies.

They made it official and announced they have signed Rory McDade as the new Head Coach Rory McDade, effective immediately.

Previous Head Coach Steve Goodwin is making a change of residence locations to the Interior of BC, namely Kelowna and both of his Assistants Russ Heard and Kevin Stewardson are also stepped down.

With Head Coach Steve Goodwin moving to Kelowna and Assistants Russ Heard and Kevin Stewardson stepping down it was time to find the candidate to fill the spot.

President and GM Dan Richardson mentioned “Rory brings a ton of playing experience from BC Junior, WLA and NLL as well as coaching experience in those three leagues as well and we are very lucky to get a coach with his background and someone who understand the culture and history of the Salmonbellies is a bonus”

He (Richardson) continued by saying” We looked at a few candidates but it didn’t take us long to zero in on New Westminster native McDade. I know Rory is extremely excited to get a chance to step behind the SR Bellies bench and guide our very talented team in 2018”.

McDade spent four seasons as the bench boss of the WLA Burnaby Lakers of the WLA and prior to that he spent 2 years with the Junior A Surrey Stickman, plus 2 other years as the Intermediate A head coach in New Westminster.

He was also an Assistant Coach in the NLL with the Minnesota Swarm and prior to his coaching experience, he had a successful career as a player.

He played in the BCJALL with “Bellies” and spent 8 seasons with the WLA Burnaby Lakers and 3 with the Minnesota Swarm.

McDade mentioned “Our coaching staff is very excited and looking forward to the challenge of competing for the Mann Cup and we have a lot of great pieces and cannot wait to get started working with players and management”.

Also joining him on the bench will be his three assistant coaches who have a wealth of talent as well and are listed below.

Ian Patterson played 14 years in the WLA, 1 with Coquitlam Adanacs and 13 with the Burnaby Lakers. He tailed 824 career WLA points. Ian recently had 2 years as an assistant coach with the Burnaby Lakers.

Darren McEwen spent 4 years with the Bellies and 10 with the Lakers for a total of 485 WLA points.  Darren played his junior career with the Junior A Burnaby Lakers.

Curtis Palidwor is the third member to join the staff and has played junior lacrosse with the Salmonbellies winning a Minto Cup in 1994 as well as being named the MVP.

He has played all 14 years with the Burnaby Lakers, plus 10 years in the NLL (Columbus, Montreal, Calgary, New York, Edmonton, Toronto and Colorado). Curtis won the 2004 NLL Champions Cup NLL with Calgary and was named Champions Cup MVP.

It’ll be an interesting season to see if they can REPEAT AS THE MANN CUP CHAMPIONS!!!