The Huntsville Hawks are a getting a boost.

Drew Wearing, who played junior A lacrosse the past two seasons with the Orillia Rama Kings, will don the green and gold of the Hawks for the 2008 season, co-coach Joe O’Halloran stated last week.

Wearing, who suited up for 35 games with the Kings, is expected to fill some of the offensive void created when the Hawks lost players like Tom Waldock, Shawn Crozier and Jeff Cowden due to age restrictions.

“It is a big deal for us,” O’Halloran said in making the announcement. “He is a naturally gifted athlete and he will help our team immensely.”

The team will be without Wearing for the first game of the season, an April 27 tilt in Markham against the Ironheads. “He will be in Jamaica, where his sister is getting married, but he will be back for our home opener (May 3 against Cornwall).”

The Hawks have spent the past week practising in preparation for the start of the 2008 junior B season. O’Halloran said that the workouts have gone better than he expected.

“It has been decent. Basically we have six open spots in my mind and in (co-coach Bob Zangari’s) mind based on the players coming back from last year. We plan to keep them all because they all have junior experience and they come from our lacrosse system.”

The first week of training attracted 18 players per session, including three goaltenders.

“We had the two goalies we expected, Dave Rosbottom, a kid we got from midget, and Andrew Bellini-Rutledge, the backup goalie from last year’s (junior) team. We also have Matt Bennetts, but we think he is focusing on joining the intermediate team because his brother is helping to coach that squad,” O’Halloran said.

The Hawks have had an interesting start to their training week. At first, there wasn’t a time where the team had the same talent on the floor at the same time.

“We have had 21 different players out at any time, ”O’Halloran said. “There were players who came out Monday and Tuesday who had to go back to school. It has been hard because we had some kids coming down from Sudbury who have come to try out but had to go back because of school.”  

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He said the coaches are a bit concerned about how the Hawks might fare in the first few games of the season. Many of their veteran players will not be available to play due to other commitments, which means the team will be not at its best come the season-opening game.  

“The only hard part is we have a game coming up and we basically doing generic lacrosse drills. It’s not going to be the team we will eventually have when we go down (to Markham). I am still confident we can get a ‘W’ because we have players who have played defence before that we can throw out there and some who have proven they can score at the junior B level. It is just that the system of lacrosse we want them to play, they won’t be able to do that for at least the first game.”

O’Halloran said that the coaching staff is please with the level of conditioning exhibited by the players. “We have ran them and they have been keeping up. Considering that we are starting, in our minds, three weeks later than we should be, I don’t think conditioning will be a problem. The test will come in Markham, because they (Ironheads) have played exhibition games and have been to a tournament.”

The Hawks will employ a run-and-gun style of play in the Markham game, which will also be used as a final look at some players who may be on the bubble.

“It is not that we aren’t prepared for our first game, because to some extent, we are, but this will not be the Hawks team that people will see the rest of the year,” O’Halloran said, adding that he expects the team to be finalized once that game has been played.