The Thomsen Trophy stays home! On a beautiful, crisp spring day we defeated Williams 12-5, retaining the Thomsen Trophy for the 11th consecutive year.

The early part of the game was not encouraging.

1. They scored the first 2 goals of the game, one on a particularly nice dodge and shot by their very good freshman midfielder. 2. We seemed a little tight early on offense. We had a couple of turnovers and we had a couple of nice opportunities denied by their goalie, whom I think is very good. 3. Hannah Quinn (my 9 yr. old daughter) inadvertantly walked into the stadium with a purple (Purple!) fleece pullover.

We dealt with all of these obstacles effectively, hopefully indicating our team turning the corner and Hannah's competitiveness vs. Williams. First, how we dealt with the purple fleece. Fortunately, Hannah realized she had on purple as soon as she walked into the stadium and was greeted with the Purple Cows' boldly purple uniforms. After a mild exclamation, she immediately ripped off the fleece and watched the game shivering in a t-shirt, despite the sub 50 temps, very cool breeze and the exhortations of her mother. She refused to put the fleece back on until after the game, even with a comfortable lead! Our team refused to give in to the early game miscues as well.

A couple keys to the game right away:

Shots: Middlebury 44 Williams 22

Face offs by Freshman Peter Mellen 17 won, 2 lost

Williams Man Up: 0/5 (we were 0/3, so that may cancel!)

The game began with Senior Andrew Giordano winning the face off and starting a fast break. He held the ball too long and took a weak shot with a check on his stick. On Williams' first possession they had a nice wing dodge and goal from the freshman I mentioned before. After another Williams goal, there was the hint of a "not again" feel in the air. Overall, though, there was a different feel. There was a feeling of poise and a recognition that teams are going to have some success at times and we just needed to hang in there. We felt as if we could move the ball on offense and get some good looks, and even though we knew the goalie would make saves, we wanted him to have to make a lot of them. He ended up with 16 saves, but we did get our opportunities.

Mike Saraceni was our spark on offense. The official stats have him listed as 2 goals and 2 assists. The goals are accurate, and he should have had a few more goals with better shooting! I will be surprised if I only see 2 assists in the film, however. He felt he had a great match up and was dodging his defenseman comfortably getting his hands free. He is the best dodger/feeder we have had in a while. He does not typically create his own shot off the dodge, although he did vs. Williams for a goal, but he has great vision and feeding ability. He sparked us against Trinity and again yesterday with some great feeds. We also got a couple of middies involved with Greg Bastis, Travis Meyer and Gio all scoring 2 goals apiece. They were sliding quickly and the mids did a nice job with rolling back quickly against the slide when they dodged and getting the ball to the weak side for another dodge. They also did a great job with spacing when Saraceni was dodging, creating space and then cutting if their man slid to Saraceni. Great ball movement and adjustment to their defense within the game.

There were only a couple of slips on defense and Eric Krieger played a more typical game for him with a couple of great saves, including a 1 v. 0 save to keep up our momentum late. He is the key to our defense. If he is making his great saves, we play with energy and confidence and maybe more importantly he can make outlets that start our fast and slow breaks. Early and late in the Trinity game he had a couple nice saves and outlets which generated fast breaks. In the middle of the Trinity game he had a drought and we did as a team as well. We need those fast breaks to put us over the top offensively. In the Williams game he was much more consistent, still let in a couple he should not have, but pulled the defense together, took responsibility and bounced back with great saves. Gabe Wood played outstanding in relief of injured John West. Ed Brown looked more like himself and Will Rawson continued to play well. Tom O'Connor is our senior long stick midfielder who does not get much attention but has had an outstanding year. he has not been beat all year that I can remember, quietly takes the ball away several times each game, ignited the winning goal vs. Trinity with a big hit, and is a ground ball hog. I hope he gets some post-season recognition.

Next up is Bates at Bates. We need to continue playing well: 1. for the sake of playing well, first and foremost 2. We need a win to secure a bye for the first round of NESCAC's which begin the next day! 3. In addition to the bye we would secure the Final 4 at Middlebury. Bates is eliminated from the playoffs, but the league is tough top to bottom and they are very capable of beating us. They manhandled Wesleyan earlier in the year and Wesleyan is a very good team.