Team Saskatchewan bantam lacrosse player Kane Nolting, 13, is heading to Winnipeg next month for the lacrosse national championships.

“This year we have a pretty good team, so I think we can get second or first in the B side or maybe third on the A side,” said Nolting.

This is the third time Nolting will suit up for Team Saskatchewan at the national championships, which will be played the first week of August. He played for the peewee team the last two years when the tournament was held in Toronto.

Nolting said the competition is pretty tough at nationals with clubs from B.C. and Ontario being especially good. He said the players on the team don’t have any set positions other than the goaltender, but he’ll be right in the play every game.

“Everybody plays offence and plays defence,” he said. “For a draw it (is) two guys in the middle and then they call them restraining lines and usually you put two guys on one side of the restraining line around the defensive side and then two guys on the offensive side. Whoever wins the draw depends on which way we go.”

Playing for the green and gold in Winnipeg would cap off a great year for the Craik School Grade 8 student. Nolting’s house league team, the Moose Jaw Mustangs, won both the Moose Jaw Kinsmen Lacrosse Association league championship this spring and the gold medal at provincials held July 5 to 7 in Regina.

Nolting scored the second goal in the Mustangs 7-4 victory in their provincial title win against the Regina Stealth on the final day of the tournament.

“Most of the teams (at provincials) we played before in Regina and some of them are pretty good teams, but we managed to win,” said Nolting.

The love of lacrosse came instantly to Nolting, even though he said his introduction to it came by accident. Nolting was playing spring hockey with a team out of Moose Jaw four years ago when an email was sent out to the players inviting them to a “come and try it day.”

Nolting, along with his younger brother Deacon, 12, and older sister Charly, 15, “just decided we were going to try it,” he said. “We went and we liked it, so we started playing.

“It’s just fun to run around and score goals and play defence. It’s lots of hitting. It’s really physical. It’s more physical than hockey and more interesting than baseball.”