A couple of observations from last week's spring trip. We had beautiful days to practice on M/T/Th/F. The turf is obviously a huge advantage over indoors, but with the cold, wet weather this spring and darkness setting in early we have very short practices, some of which are designed more around staying warm than improving as a team. The warm weather allowed us to get in quality practices and I believe we came back to Middlebury a much better team. We played solid first halves against Conn College and Wesleyan and really opened up and played well in the second half. One of the things we face is that teams are jacked up to play us and get confidence early from any success, so we get into some battles early. If we can withstand some of this early pressure our depth kicks in for us in the second half and we can pull away as we did against Conn and Wesleyan. It was nice to see Attackman Charley Howe play well against Wesleyan as he recorded 4 goals and 2 assists and had a 5th goal disallowed on a poor offsides call. He is a tremendous shooter and can/should be a guy who gets us 3-4 goals a game.

Gettysburg was just a mess. Their field was horrible before the game and it was a hard, steady rain during the game, so the conditions were awful. No excuses, though, they handled the conditions much better. They handled and possessed the ball better on offense, they got the ball up off the ground (or more accurately, out of the mud), we spent too much time in the penalty box and they did not, they cleared the ball well and we did not. With all of that we were down by a goal late in the game and had several fast break opportunities resulting in excellent scoring opportunities that we did not finish. We had a time out with the ball and 2 minutes remaining and there were a couple of interesting and informative scenarios. We had practiced the end of the game scenarios consistently throughout the year, but we had practiced the scenarios with our team mixed up in practice. We had not been personnel specific and we do not have the "go to" guys that we have had in the past, so the specifics of the late game situation had not been practiced well enough and the individuals did not understand their roles well enough. So, we had a decent opportunity, but were fairly inept, turned the ball over and did not get a shot off. Lesson learned, the next two days in practice we had "Time out at the end of the game" practice!

Last night at Union was very wet and very cold but we played extremely well. Any of our lopsided scores this season happened late in the game, so it was nice to pull away early and get our subs some quality minutes. Howe, Saraceni and Greg Bastis all had three goals as starters in less than half the game. Caleb Holmes was fantastic at defense against a good attackman, knocking the stick out of his hand several times. The story was our speed and athleticism creating many fast/slow break opportunities and finishing many of them. Brian McGregor dominated on face offs and wing men Bastis and

Dave Leach converted several of the face offs directly into goals. It was a well balanced team effort by all positions and all levels of players.

We play Amherst at Amherst Saturday at 1:00. They are talented and athletic so it should be a tough and fun match up.