"Webster" helps lacrosse team celebrate a Canadian championship

In “Webster,” the 1980s TV sitcom for which he is best remembered as an actor, Emmanuel Lewis played the orphaned son of a pro football player, who ended up being adopted by another football player and his wife.

But it seems that Lewis’ favourite sport in real life may in fact be box lacrosse – and he’s ridden that fandom to a couple of Canadian championships.

He was in Hagersville, Ontario, on Friday night as the Six Nations Chiefs wrapped up the Canadian Senior A lacrosse title with a 9-4 win over the Victoria Shamrocks.

The Chiefs won the best-of-seven series 4-2 to retain the prestigious Mann Cup, which they also won in six games last year in Victoria.

And the diminutive Lewis, who still looks much the same as he did in his “Webster” heyday, was there for both triumphs.

It turns out he’s a longtime friend of Chiefs’ owner Ken Hill, having met Hill many years ago while attending university in Atlanta.

He attended his first Chiefs game last summer as they wrapped up the Ontario championship, then joined them in Victoria for his first Mann Cup experience.

Lewis elaborated on this in an interview during Friday’s game with Scott Arnold of JVI Video Production, which produced webcasts of this year’s championship series.

“We’re ready to do it again this year,” he said. “It’s my second big show and, you know, we’re ready to take it down. We’re enjoying every minute of it. I love it.”

It’s been quite the summer at Six Nations, a First Nations reserve near Brantford and Hamilton in southern Ontario.

Retaining the gold Mann Cup, which lacrosse players look upon with the same reverence given by hockey players to the Stanley Cup, is a fitting finale to what is certainly the most successful lacrosse season ever enjoyed by one single Canadian community.

The Canadian Lacrosse Association stages four championships for men’s box lacrosse, and Six Nations won three of them in recent weeks. No other centre has ever won more than two in a calendar year.

On August 23, the Arrows won the Minto Cup as Junior A champions, defeating the Coquitlam Adanacs 4-2 in a best-of-seven series played in Langley, B.C. One day later, at a tournament in Halifax, the Rebels capped a six-game winning streak by downing the Seneca War Chiefs 14-7 to capture their fourth consecutive Founders Cup as Junior B titlists.

The Mann Cup goes to the best Senior A team in the country. And another Six Nations team, the Rivermen, almost made it a complete sweep of the four titles by advancing to the national Senior B final for the Presidents Cup. They settled for a silver medal after losing that title match on August 31.

The three championships won by Six Nations match the number won by local lacrosse star Johnny Powless. He played for the Arrows at the Minto Cup and was called up to the Chiefs for the Mann Cup, achieving a rare Junior A/Senior A double in the same season.

He also won a National Lacrosse League professional championship earlier this year with the Rochester Knighthawks, as did Chiefs teammates Cody Jamieson, Stephen Keogh, Ian Llord, Craig Point, Sid Smith and Jon Sullivan.

Two other Chiefs, Dan Coates and Jesse Gamble, were also members of the Canadian team that won the world field lacrosse championship in July in Colorado.