In the summertime, when the ice surface has been taken out of Totem One, and the air conditioning system has been shut off, the arena at the SLS Centre’s primary playing surface becomes a battleground of a different sort.
It’s during these months that, for the home games of the Rockyview Rage, Cochrane’s Junior B Tier 2 representative in the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse League (RMLL), when SLS Centre staff open the big drop-down door at the west end of the arena, which allows for the flow of fresh air and filters out the smell of sweat, but also has the adverse effect of beaming the sun directly onto the playing surface and into the eyes of players on the east end of the rink.
It is in these conditions that the Rage, in the final weekend of regular season play, hosted the Strathmore Venom on July 12. Heading into the Saturday matinee, the Rage and Venom were separated in the standings by a single win. A victory in the second to last game of the regular season would separate the 5-9 Rage from the 4-10 Venom.
Both teams lay well behind the top tier of teams in the south division; eight points separated the fifth place Rage from the fourth place Foothills Spurs. A win on Saturday meant the Rage could give themselves breathing room from the Venom and head into the final game of the season against the league-best Southern Alberta Chaos with the ability to afford a loss without falling behind in the standings.
All season the Rage have been led offensively by Deegan Reutlinger and Carson Barrows, a pair of 18-year-olds who have totalled 50 and 41 points respectively. Reutlinger ranks eighth among all Junior B Tier 2 players and his 30 goals scored is good enough to seventh in the league. Barrows has scored one more goal than his teammate, ranking him seventh in the league, and his 41 total points places him just outside the top 10 at number 12.
But lacrosse is a team sport, and aside from a pair of brilliant, season-long performances, the 2025 season never got off on the right foot for the Rage. They started their season with back-to-back games on the road–both losses–before winning their first game of the season on May 4. The Rage followed the win up with another set of back-to-back losses. A win at home followed by three losses in a row set up a match against the Venom, which the Rage won on the road. Since June 14, the Rage seesawed from win to loss. June 14, loss; June 15, win; June 20, loss; June 21, win.
That pattern would continue against the Venom. In the first period the visitors put five on the board and held the Rage to an albatross. The Rage got on the scoresheet in the second, putting away three goals, but a defensive collapse allowed the Venom to add six more scores to their total. In the third period the Venom ran away with the game. The Rage scored three of their own, almost all in the final five minutes, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
The Venom won 17-6.
With control of the tie-breaker in the hands of the Venom, the Rage fell to sixth place in the division. The next day, in the final game of the regular season, the Chaos would beat the Rage by a score of 13-8, putting a cap on the 2025 regular season.
