Middlebury defeated Springfield 20-11 today on a beautiful day in Springfield.

The tale of the game was our depth and balance. They were playing well early, but could not stay with us over the first half. We had played 15 midfielders by the second quarter. Our attack all played well, no one needed to dominate. Bryan Sanchez has been coming on strong in the midfield and played a key role today. He was the All League tailback in football and has blazing speed, he is a little raw as a lacrosse player, but he improves more and more each game. Matt Dunn and Curt Goldman looked strong in their second game back after hockey. That is now our first midfield line: Goldman, Dunn and Sanchez.

Peter Soden was dominant as usual with face offs. It certainly helps a lot when you have great depth in the midfield and Soden keeps the other team's middies on defense.

Nick Lesher, a Sophomore long stick midfielder from St. Alban's, DC was the game ball winner with great ground ball work and solid on-ball play.

We play Union home Tuesday. We were up 6-0 at halftime last year and hung on to win unimpressively 9-7. That should be enough incentive to guard against complacency. We are not sure if we will play on grass or Astroturf, we think the stadium will probably be ready Monday and we will play on grass.

Best Wishes,

Erin

Just a quick follow up to my previous message regarding the Springfield game. A couple other details which might give you the flow of the game a little better if you were not in attendance.

Springfield scored first on a fluke goal which rolled into the net. We controlled the remainder of the first, without necessarily outplaying them by a wide margin. The first quarter ended 5-3 Middlebury.

The second quarter was all Middlebury and the score at the half was 11-5. By the end of the 3rd it was 18-5 and we had already subbed wholesale. The 4th quarter belonged to Springfield, but the game was already well in hand.

The starting attack was too much for Springfield with Dave Seeley and Holt Hopkins each garnering 3 goals and 2 assists with somewhat limited playing time. The rest of the scoring was pretty balanced. Peter Soden won over 2/3 of his face offs, so that helped!

Erin