Altona Lacrosse Club rising star Lachlan McDonald has lived his boyhood dream.
The 17-year-old “middie defence” was part of the Australian team that competed at the under-19 World Lacrosse Championships in Canada.
McDonald felt an immense amount of pride in pulling on the national team jersey in Coquitlam, British Columbia.
“It’s been my dream ever since I was a kid,” he told Star Weekly.
“You always watch the Aussies in all sports and you wish you can chuck on an Aussie jersey.
“It was an unreal experience.”
McDonald featured in all seven games for Australia.
The team had a mixed tournament, eventually losing to Iroquois Nationals in the third place play-off.
The Aussies won two games and lost five – and the experience for McDonald and his teammates was priceless.
“You can’t say too many times that you’ve travelled the world playing sport,” he said.
“As a team, we’ve been training together for two years. It started off with a squad of about 150 … as the games got closer, they kept cutting it down to eventually 27 players.
“We did create a big bond with each other for the future.”
McDonald will never forget the second game of the tournament when Australia beat England 13-10 in a classic.
The English have been a traditional sports foe of the Aussies for years and that is no different in lacrosse.
“It was unreal to win against the rivals,” McDonald said.
“It was a very physical game … it was good to get away with that one.”
The Australian team was made up largely of Victorian players.
The western suburbs had strong representation with Williamstown’s Alex Mercier, Sean Clarke and Griffin Nicholas and Footscray’s Matthew Davies, Matthew Singleton and Lachlan Russell also making the team. McDonald was in a unique position in that he made the squad from second-tier team Altona.
The Emmanuel College year 12 student was proud to represent Altona on such a big stage.
“I’ve got a lot of family history at that club and my dad [Bernard] is now the president,” McDonald said.
“There’s some people I played with when I first started playing lacrosse and now I’m playing with them in seniors.”
McDonald wants to study engineering at university, but is also keen to pursue a career in lacrosse.
He is hopeful that his destination will be a college in the US.
“I’d love to go off and study and play lacrosse in America,” he said.
“I’ve been working on trying to get a scholarship through talking to some coaches.
“Nowadays you have to make your own highlight reel and send it off to the coaches, so that’s what I’ve done.”
