After some flurries overnight and into the morning on Saturday, the field miraculously cleared up by game time and we were able to get our scrimmage in against St. Michael's yesterday afternoon. It was our second and final scrimmage of the preseason as a few of our former scrimmage opponents, St. Lawrence and Hamilton are now on the regular season slate.

We've made some good progress on the offensive end of the field in the first few weeks of the season.  This year we've spent more time on fundamentals than ever before by carving out some time in the morning for small group work mainly focusing on shooting and stickwork.  Watching us during the past week and in the scrimmage yesterday it looks like the extra work is starting to pay off.  While our scoring has been pretty balanced in the first few scrimmages a few guys are starting to stand out.  Sophomore Joel Blockowicz had three goals yesterday and may have been the best player on the field.  Just like the rest of our team, he still has plenty to work on but he has the speed and ability to be a difference maker for us this year.  Beyond that, both Stew Kerr and first-year Sean Carroll (Wilton, CT) had a couple of goals apiece and are both capable of elevating their game even more as we get into the regular season.

Defensively we gave up some pretty good looks with the first group out there but Nate Gaudio played well between the pipes and made some excellent saves.   The two goals given up by Nate came directly off of failed clears that were mental mistakes by our guys, overall we have the ability to be an excellent clearing team this year.  Our poles handle the ball very well and all do a good job of getting the ball off the ground.  Yesterday it was Johnny Duvnjak that picked up some tough GB's in traffic and gave us some energy at that end of the field.

As you all know, late winter/early spring weather in VT can make for some interesting practices and keeps us on our toes with changing forecasts and field conditions on a daily basis.  This year has been especially trying so far but our guys have done a good job of showing up ready to go and we had a productive second full week of practice leading up to the St. Mike's scrimmage.  It looks like things are going to warm up a bit towards the end of this week and hopefully we can put together our best week yet.

We open up with Bates next Saturday up in Lewiston at 1pm.  They'll play their opener this afternoon down at Harvard against Skidmore at 2pm.  We're looking forward to the opportunity ahead of us this season and can't wait to get started against the Bobcats next weekend.  Thanks for all of the continued support!