We opened up NCAA play yesterday with a convincing 24-7 win over the Castleton Spartans. Castleton won’t be winning the NCAA championship anytime soon but they did have some kids who could play and they went hard. These first round games against an unfamiliar opponent are always tough as you don’t know what to expect going into it and I don’t think our guys were ready for what hit them. The good news is that we came away learning a valuable lesson even if the scoreboard didn’t indicate it was much of a game.

The lesson occurred during the opening 90 seconds as Castleton scored off of the opening face off and on the ensuing possession to take a 2-0 lead. Whatever our guys thought of the Spartans going into the game didn’t matter at that point and we realized that we needed to get back to playing our style of lacrosse. From that point on the team responded and rattled off the next 11 goals by the middle of the 2nd quarter. When we started to go after ground balls like we meant it and were able to push the ball in transition, they couldn’t run with us. Interestingly enough that’s been the case this year regardless of who’s been lined up on the opposing bench.

The same lesson came back to us when we got up big in the 2nd quarter and you started to see the guys getting too full of themselves on the field. You could see a decision here and there that our guys wouldn’t usually make. It showed up most glaringly in the clearing game which led to a few goals for Castleton, one right before the half. At one point we even had a young player make up his own clear on the endline which of course didn’t turn out too well either. It served as a good teaching point to our guys that they can’t let the score or the opponent effect our decision making and how we play. We need to approach each play as if the game is tied up 0-0 and just trust what we’ve done all year to get here. We don’t need to be making things up now!

I felt we put together a nice 2nd half as well and the guys played hard throughout. We were able to play all of the 28 players that the NCAA allows us to dress in a game and in doing so were able to get a few seniors some well deserved playing time. Charles Ward played the entire 2nd half in goal and made some terrific saves. He outlets the ball as well as Ryan so we really didn’t have any drop off there. Bryon Langford and Tyler Lovas both played significant minutes at close defense with Byron absolutely shredding one of their top attackmen every time he touched the ball. Byron has come a long way in four years and has brought a consistent effort this year to practice which allowed him to take advantage of his opportunity yesterday.

Senior midfielders Brooks Toth and Nick Stevens scored their first career goals and boy have those guys earned them. Brooks has been a steady role player for us these past few years and it was great to see him finally stick a few shots in a game! As for Nick, he couldn’t have had worse luck with injuries over his career but I’d challenge anyone to find a student-athlete with a better attitude and appreciation for being a part of something bigger than himself. It was great that he was finally able to get on the board and to see his teammate’s reaction on the sideline. Finally, Darren Scheufele has been playing some regular minutes for us recently but also deserves to be mentioned with the rest of this group as he really took advantage of his extended time yesterday. Darren is another hard working kid who has a knack for being in the right place at the right time. As exhibited by his big goal against Tufts the other day and also on a great cut yesterday where Mike Giordano found him on the backside. This group has done a tremendous job and we hope their career will last for a few more weeks!

Next up are the Lord Jeffs (14-2) who are having the best season in their program’s history. As you may recall we lost a close one down there in early April by a score of 9-7. They present some tough match-ups and have good players all over the field, but at this time of year so does everyone left standing. We’ll need to play well down at Amherst to keep our season going and play OUR game from start to finish. Should be fun.