NLL Insider

Last night, Syracuse scoring machine Mike Leveille was awarded the Tweaaraton Trophy as the college game’s top stud.

For those not familiar with what the Tewaaraton is, checkout this link…

But in short, it’s the hardware that’s handed out to the best lacrosse player playing NCAA ball, for both the guys and the ladies.

Guys like Mikey Powell, Matt Ward, Kyle Harrison and former Albany Attack forward and Hofstra stud middie, Doug Shanahan, are past winners. The nod’s been handed out since 2001 and is definitely one of the game’s most anticipated announcements every year. So definitely big congrats to Mike for last night’s honour, and to Hannah Neilsen from Northwestern for being named top female in 08 too.

That brings me to us. What does our game have to honour our Junior level ballers?

In short, nuthin’.

Yeah each province recognizes their own. And yeah there’s an MVP award handed out at the Minto. But that’s not really naming the best Junior baller on the planet. Is it? No way! How could it be?

So with Inside Lacrosse’s and NLL Insider’s new national mentality and approach to viewing the game past what’s going on in our own backyard, we’ll also be running kinda our own Tewaaraton this summer for Junior players in the country. We want to help recognize the best Junior lacrosse player in Canada, period. How does Ontario’s top dawg stack up against BC’s? We’ll try and answer that this year.

Every Thursday we’ll be checking in with our Top 10 candidates, or watch-list if you will, as we try and determine who this year’s MVP across the whole country is.

We’ll be looking the BCJALL, OLA and RMLL, and even include JR B players as well, if their game dictates as much. We’re looking for the top Junior player from across the country and will take into consideration anyone and everyone who plays the game at that level.

Our National Junior Player of the Year will be what the Hart is to the NHL, the Heisman is to College Football and definitely what the Tewaaraton is to college ball.

So with that said, make sure to check-back next week to see who’ll land a spot on our initial Top 10. We won’t be ranking them from one to ten, but rather just giving you a pool of ten players that we’ll be taking into consideration if the award were to dropped on that day.

We’ll be including players based on what they’ve done this year, not their reputations. So even though a stud like Stephen Keogh is no doubt one of the best pound-for-pound ballers playing the junior game today, so far, he’s only registered a single outing for the Toronto Beaches, due to winning the National title with Syracuse, and although he might get consideration later in the season, if we were to drop out initial Top 10 today, we’d likely not include him. No knock on Keogh, we know he’d school most guys all night long, but we wanna make sure this thing is based on what that player has done in a specific year.

It’s what have you done for me lately, not what did you do last year. Get it?

So I guess that’s about it. Make sure to check-in again next Thursday for our first pool for candidates and stay tuned in all summer too. At the conclusion of each province’s regular season, we’ll announce our final Top 10, which will be where this year’s winner will be pulled from. Then just prior to the Minto Cup, our first ever National Junior Player of the Year will be named.

The winner will be selected by Inside Lacrosse and NLL Insider staff, who will not only be taking in a whack of games all summer, but will also be in constant contact with GM’s, coaches and players who are lined up beside these guys all season long. Oh yeah, and we’ll only be looking at what guys are doing during the regular season, not the post-season. Wanna make sure that even the guys playing on the lowest ranked teams are getting some serious consideration. Playing for a winner is important, but it’s not the only thing.

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