KINGSTON – Ja­maica’s na­tion­al lacrosse team missed out on a podi­um fin­ish at the Pan Amer­i­can Men’s Lacrosse Cham­pi­onship when they went down to Hau­denosaunee 16-9 in the bronze medal match in Ja­maica on Sun­day.

De­spite the re­sult, Ja­maica se­cured their spot at the 2027 World Lacrosse Cham­pi­onships as one of the top five fin­ish­ers at the tour­na­ment.

Hau­denosaunee led 6-5 at the end of the first quar­ter, and main­tained that one-goal ad­van­tage at the half (8-7). They con­tin­ued to press their ad­van­tage over the last two quar­ters, outscor­ing Ja­maica 8-2 to clinch the bronze medal.

Hay­den Hiltz led Ja­maica’s ef­fort, scor­ing four goals, with Stone Evans and Elias McLaugh­lin scor­ing two each.

The team’s head coach, Mark Wil­son, said their per­for­mance at the Cham­pi­onship, as well as qual­i­fi­ca­tion to the World Cham­pi­onship, was a ma­jor boost to­wards their goal of qual­i­fy­ing for the 2028 Los An­ge­les Olympic Games.

“I think this is a great plat­form for that, and I think it shows that we de­serve to be in Olympic con­sid­er­a­tion.

“We’re out here com­pet­ing with lit­er­al­ly the best teams in the world be­cause this re­gion is the tough­est re­gion in lacrosse, con­sid­er­ing we have six of the top 15 teams in the world,” Wil­son said.

CMC