Panthers,

I'm a few days late with my update here but wanted to let you know how things went on Friday night down in Queensbury, NY against the Larries now that I've had a chance to up for air after a long week of lacrosse!  I can't think of anything else that I'd rather be doing though and I don't expect any of you to feel sorry for me!

I believe I mentioned in my last email that we were planning to do "Judgement Day" on Thursday evening/Friday morning and after going through it I can safely say it's the best team building exercise I've ever been a part of as a coach or player.  As coaches we really didn't know what to expect from our team or from the company known as "The Program" but boy did they both deliver.

They had the guys out on Kohn Field on Thursday night from 5:45-9:30pm and worked them hard, military training exercises for close to four hours, plenty of pushups, planks, mountain climbers, fireman carries, you name it.  After 3 and a half hours, the lead instructor came over and said these guys are dialed in with their foot on the gas, they could keep going for a few more hours, and they could have…

I was really impressed with how our guys completely bought in and hopefully it's a sign of good things to come.  A surreal moment came when the lights went out on Kohn at 9pm as planned and the Winter Carnival firework show began soon after.  By 9:25 as the team huddled up to wrap up the workout it coincided with the grand finale and it was almost as if we had planned it that way.

The following morning the guys were on the pool deck at 5:30am for their pool workout which lasted until about 9:15.  It took our guys a few minutes to get things going again but once they did it was impressive.  The best thing about the two day exercise was seeing some unexpected leaders step up in a big way.  In particular guys like seniors Heath Townsend and Matt Rayner, juniors Patrick Pembroke, Billy Chapman, Stew Kerr, and Erich Pfeffer as well as sophomore Nate Gaudio all really showed some impressive qualities over the course of the two days.  There were plenty of others as well but these guys went above and beyond what I thought they were capable of going into this season.

Fast forward about 9 hours after getting out of the pool and we're facing it off against St. Lawrence.  Once again I wasn't sure what to expect from this group and what we were actually physically going to be able to do after the workouts in the previous 24 hours.  And once again, I came away in awe of what the team showed on the field that night.  It certainly shows that they're ready to be challenged as we move forward.

We decided to play 5 quarters and to split them evenly, 2 1/2 quarters for the older guys and the same thing for the new guys in the program.  The scrimmage began with both teams trading goals and with things being fairly even statistically as well.  Stephen Seymour got us on the board with a nice overhand rip from about 11yards and continued to show that he's ready to go this year.

The 2nd quarter told me all I needed to know about this team that had only practiced 6 times together and had just been absolutely crushed physically for 7 out of the past 25 hours.  We came out and blew the doors off of St. Lawrence.

Not that we were keeping score at the time but we ended up scoring 6 unanswered goals that quarter. We ended up shutting them out as well to take an 8-2 lead after the 2nd.  We scored goals in transition, on man up, in 6v6, and were clicking on all cylinders.  Erich Pfeffer stuck a few time and room shots, Quinn Cronan scored his 2nd impressive goal of the night and a few other guys contributed some highlight reel goals for the surprisingly large crowd on hand.

We snapped back to the reality of it being early in the season the following quarter as our success quickly got to our young team's collective head.  We were outscored 3-0 in the 3rd quarter and proceeded to get our tails whipped on gb's to go along with poor execution over the course of the next two quarters.  We would go on to trade goals the rest of the way for a final score of 13-9, showing that we still have a long way to go.  It was a great lesson for our guys early on this year that we don't change what we're doing when we have success on the field.  There's one standard we hold ourselves to and we need to keep our foot on the gas as our instructor from "The Program" would have pointed out to the guys.

The same new faces continue to impress, Joel Blockowicz went for 1g, 1a, Nate Gaudio looked great between the pipes and Cal Williams is going to be a heck of a pole for us, he's going to push guys right away.

There are plenty of other guys working their butts off right now and hopefully I'll have a few more pleasant surprises after our scrimmages against St. Mike's and Hamilton this Saturday.

That's it for now, thanks for all of your continued support!

DC