SUBMITTED PHOTO CHAD EAKINS
Medicine Hat Lacrosse players and best friends Jayden Richards and Houston Eakins pose in their Jr A. Mountaineers jerseys after being drafted to the club on Monday.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
For Jayden Richards and Houston Eakins, getting drafted to a junior A lacrosse club is great, but being drafted to the same team as your best friend makes it even better.
The Medicine Hat duo were drafted into the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse League by Calgary’s junior A Mountaineers on Monday. Eakins was taken in the third round and Richards was picked in the ninth.
Both say they are pretty excited to join the junior A level but also do it with a friend.
“Super excited, I think it will be fun and it’s been one of my goals for a while,” Eakins said. “I’m just quite excited and hopefully I can play with them.”
“It’s pretty nice… We’ve played together since we were seven or eight, like, just everything every single year, we’d be on the same team,” Richards said. “So we have that special chemistry and plus, we’re good friends outside of lacrosse, too. So that special chemistry and it’s always nice going into a new team with someone that you know, so you’re not by yourself, and just having that other person with you. If makes it a whole lot easier, and you’re just a lot more comfortable.”
They have both played for the Medicine Hat Sun Devils since they were six, when they switched over from hockey to lacrosse. Chad Eakins, Houston’s dad, coached the pair for eight seasons and helped Richards make the transition of sports.
Eakins said he’s excited for both Houston and Jayden as a dad and a coach.
“Proud dad moment aside, really excited to see that the kids got drafted,” Eakins said. “They put in lots of long hours and lots of hard work and both were really coachable.”
Eakins said as a coach it’s nice to have talent throughout the city come up and hopefully promote lacrosse within Medicine Hat. He said registration has opened for minor lacrosse and hopes people sign up and pick up the sport.
Nick Richards, Jayden’s dad, said it was super cool to see his son get drafted and it’s something Jayden had long dreamt for.
“He was over the moon and we were over the moon as parents and just proud as heck actually, it was a wicked feeling,” Richards said.
Richards also said it’s been great being able to have the support of the Eakins family over the years as the two families have shared responsibilities of driving to all of the different tournaments and practices.
The past two seasons proved difficult for both families with COVID playing havoc on lacrosse seasons. The duo found playing time with the Lethbridge Barracudas.
Richards said he’s thankful to the teams that gave him and Houston a place to play over the past two seasons.
“I’m just so thankful for these teams for like, inviting me out and giving me the opportunity to play through COVID,” Richards said. “Like if If it wasn’t for the teams I don’t know if I would be at this stage where I’m at junior A.”
He said him and Eakins would go to a field and throw a ball around to stay loose but it was not the same as practice or getting in game action.
Eakins said Richards works hard and encourages him because he’s such a team player. Both have worked out with the Mountaineers in showcases and will head to training camp ahead of the season starting up in April.
Richards said he’s been told their hard work starts now. But he says him and Houston haven’t stopped working hard and will only work harder now that they’ve been drafted.
“We didn’t make it here by just walking up and not trying in practice, not trying and games,” Richards said. “Me and him both have just worked hard to get up to this level. And now that we’re drafted, we can’t just be like, ‘Oh we’re drafted, now we get to slack off, and we can kind of just chill, go like 50 per cent at practices and stuff like that.’ No, this is where this is where the hard work continues. We’ve got to step it up now that we’re playing with a higher level of people.”
They both hope to bring a physical game to the Mountaineers and make the team out of camp, but Richards says if that’s not the case they will continue working hard until they make it.
“If we keep putting in the hard work that we’ve been putting in the whole time, then I believe that we can go up to play junior A,” Richards said. “Hopefully this year if we don’t make the roster, go up and play a couple of games. So we know what it’s like and know what our compete level has to be like.”
