Yesterday we saw a different Amherst team, the one that the rest of the league had seen all year. They came out flying and jumped on us early. It was 3-0 before we'd had a single offensive possession and it looked like they were playing at a completely different speed than we were. We did get a couple of goals from David Hild once we got the ball down on the offensive end but Amherst would then go on another run to make it 8-2 in the 2nd quarter. We were able to get two quick goals in the last two minutes before the half, one from David Hild on a nice take from behind the cage and the other off a quick hitter we call "Ice" which went from Bart Witmer down to Tim Cahill.

Credit Coach Ritter and our seniors for setting the tone at halftime for what would end up being a statement by our players in the 3rd quarter. Even though we lost the first face off of the half, we would go on to dominate the 3rd quarter. Within 5 minutes we had erased the 4 goal deficit after two goals by Pete Smith and goals by Alex Englert and Andrew Conner. After losing the ground ball battle in the first half we would beat them 22-7 in that category in the 2nd half. Our face off guys did a superb job in the 2nd half winning 14 of 17 draws and our defensive middies played their best half of lacrosse of the season.

The game ball went to Bart Witmer who has been asked to step up as a defensive middie this year while still taking some offensive runs when he's fresh. You may recall that it was Bart who stuck a big shot in the Colby game that got us going late in that one. Yesterday he came up with some big ground balls and had a few points but it was the confidence and passion that he played with that inspired his teammates. He was unbelievable on the sideline encouraging his teammates and also getting in a certain youngster's face after he had attempted to pick up a ground ball with one hand. While it was a collective team effort to turn it on the way we did, Bart was leading the charge.

Hopefully we can play with the same kind of passion and get some leadership from our older guys this weekend down at Tufts. We'll play Bowdoin on Saturday at 3pm, see you there!