It's a Whole New Season

We are back into lacrosse for our first spring season. Unfortunately, the pictures this season will be few and far between. To enable as many players as possible to participate, all of our games save one this season will be night games. This way the boys who are in both baseball and lacrosse can play both sports. Young Man loves playing under the lights, but the camera doesn't. The boys did their warm up before it got dark.

They also got their brand new jerseys. Anyone want to guess how long they stay white?

The game itself was a whole new experience. This team is considered an elite team and we see why. The intensity is up many notches from the winter season. Even the parents who had boys on the local middle school club team noted that this was more intense. The coaches are really good and they had the boys running plays and making passes. Considering that the boys only had one practice before this game and less than half the team attended, we weren't really expecting much. About half the team played together over the winter season so the players really weren't even used to each other. For the first several minutes, the defense didn't even have anything to do! Our attack and midfielders kept the ball near the opposing team's goal. It did take a while for the boys to get together and score, but they managed to put up an early lead.

Still, the surprises were only beginning. Young Man surprised us all when he came on the field with his long pole playing midfield. Whoa! We didn't even know that they were going to play long stick middies! His very first play was to get on his man and force a turnover. Several parents looked up in surprise. Where did that little guy come from?! Young Man kept it up and ran on and off the field at his coaches' direction. All the players came together and played well enough to finish off their first game of the season with a 9-3 win! After the game, their coach brought them back to earth reminding them that they really need to practice their ball handling and passing. As one coach put it, "A pretty goal is one with an assist."

The next game is in two weeks. Between now and then, the boys have two speed and endurance training sessions and lots of time to practice on their own. This should be a very interesting season!