Steve Milton: Keogh brings his winning history to the Rock

Wherever Stephen Keogh goes to play lacrosse, championships seem to go with him.

The Rock were absolutely aware of this when they signed the 35-year-old free agent to help fortify their offence for a determined run at the National Lacrosse League crown the Hamilton-again pro team has not worn since 2011.

When his Orangeville Northmen won the 2008 Minto Cup as Canadian junior box lacrosse champions, Keogh was the Cup MVP, current Rock bench boss Matt Sawyer and two of his assistants - Bruce Codd and Rusty Kruger - were the coaching staff.

That national title was sandwiched between the 2008 and 2009 NCAA field lacrosse championships Keogh won with Syracuse University, where he was a second-team all-American. After he graduated into the NLL as the league's second-overall pick in the 2011 entry draft, his Rochester Knighthawks immediately won three straight championships with the all-round forward scoring 26 goals as a rookie and 33 as a third-year pro.

And that was just his winter job. He also was a critical part of the Six Nations Chiefs' three Mann Cup titles in four years, beginning in 2013.

I've been lucky enough to play this sport for so long, meet great people, make great friendships and to top it all off win some championships, and that's what I'm looking for again this year," Keogh, the Rock's leading goal-scorer with five in the opening two games, said as the team prepares to host archrival Buffalo Bandits on Saturday night (7 p.m.) at FirstOntario Centre.

I'm trying to hoist the trophy for the Rock, the team that I grew up watching. I'm getting up there in age so I don't know how many years I have left to do it."

After a decade in the NLL, and more than 200 goals and 400 points with Rochester, Colorado and, most recently, Halifax, Keogh signed with the Rock, not only because he'd followed them since he started playing competitively in The Beaches at the age of four, but because of where the team had relocated.

After years of working in the Toronto water department, on May 30 Keogh began his four-month training period as a Hamilton firefighter, then started working shifts in late September.

It's always been my dream to become a firefighter, but I always put lacrosse first, living in the States and travelling to play," says the right-hand shooting forward. The last few years I've been throwing everything at it, trying to make my dream come true. I was lucky enough to land with the City of Hamilton. It's somewhere I've always wanted to work because they've got one of the best departments in Canada. Firefighting is my career now and that takes main preference.

Being a Toronto guy I've always wanted to play for the Rock so it was all kind of a dream come true: playing in Hamilton and also serving the community as a firefighter."

Rock legend Dan Dawson is also a firefighter (in Brampton) and the two are reuniting as teammates in Hamilton. Both played professional field lacrosse in the MILL for the old Hamilton Nationals, who spent three years here before moving to Florida. Oddly, that was the one league in which Keogh hasn't won a title, although he and Dawson did win the Mann Cup as Six Nations teammates. Dawson and goalie Nick Rose - an Orangeville native who backstopped the 2008 Minto Cup winners - are the only Rock players Keogh has played with on the same club team, although he's played against everybody else.

Keogh and fellow NLL veteran Corey Small were brought in to help elevate the Rock's offence to a similar plane as its dominating defence. The team hammered Vancouver with 19 goals in the home opener, then had trouble rebounding from a slow start in the 11-7 loss in Rochester last weekend. But Small popped a hat-trick in the opener, and Keogh did the same in Rochester.

This offence is pretty dynamic," Keogh says. We have a lot of guys who can do a lot of different things. I think I've had success the first two games because of how much attention Tom Schreiber and Challen Rogers draw on the right side. Offensively we have a great group: you have one of the best veterans in Dan Dawson, Smallsie can shot the ball and score. Zach Manns and Dan Craig can also put the ball in the net.

The chemistry is still a bit of a work in progress with myself and Corey coming in as the new guys but our motto is Just get better each week.'"

Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com