Sean Whittsitt Describes his First Year of DI Lacrosse at Harvard

My First Year
 
The season started up as soon as we signed up for classes. After two weeks of orientation and shopping period—a weeklong period where you attend classes you are interested in taking—we were already lifting three times a week and conditioning another 2-3. Plagued by a misdiagnosis of a bulging disc in my lower back, I sat out the first 4-6 weeks of fall activities. We held “official” practices twice a week while maintaining the lifting/conditioning schedule.
            I was amazed by the intensity of the non-lax element of lacrosse. We were treated like future NFL draft prospects by our head strength coach, former Maryland football/lacrosse strength trainer Craig “Fitz” Fitzgerald—apparently nicknames come easily in the strength training world, as he was assisted by “Mad Dog”, “Mark the Shark” and the “Mullenator”. Everything about our workouts was about as intense as the man that led them. Traditionally passive exercises were all of a sudden difficult under Fitz’s leadership.   Exercises you would never image to be intense, such as stretching, all of a sudden consisted of dynamic stretches where we were incessantly riddled with cries of, “come on!” “get after it!” and “if you don’t stretch right we will do up-downs!”. Even the most minute activity, getting a drink of water or going to the bathroom, was intensified in Fitz’s weight room. Nonetheless the lifting and conditioning paid off. We continued our lifting and running all the way until the first game, when we stopped conditioning but continued to lift.
            A tournament at Yale marked the end of the ’05 fall ball era and also gave us a chip on our shoulder for the upcoming season with a record of 0-2. Between fall ball and the start of the season on February 1st, we held individual workouts with our assistant coach. For defensemen these meant countless reps of practicing slides and footwork drills. These were not my favorite, but they helped me learn a lot about team defense—something I knew very little about coming from high school.         
The learning curve was amazing. I was overwhelmed with lacrosse terminology galore. I heard saying I didn’t think existed and had the faintest idea as to what they meant—but retrospectively I believe this is part in due to of our coach’s decision to use incredulously ambiguous terminology during times of passion. I had to learn four primary defenses all of which we went in and out of multiple times during a single possession. I put in extra time with the diagrams to learn the defenses hoping to give myself every opportunity available to get playing time in the spring.
            The season began the same day of spring classes, on a cold day (30 degree high) the first of February. The actual season was a relief. The first few weeks were marked with conditioning sessions the cold weather you can’t even imagine growing up in Seattle, but practices would only get better. A typical practice consisted of a warm up, stretch, line drills and then the team was separated into defense and offense—of which I went with the defense. We practiced clears and did some dodging drills led by our young and enthusiastic coach, Crocco, who graduated only a few years earlier from Harvard.
            The season was fun but busy. Having the foresight to avoid morning classes, as sleep is of vital importance to my life, and to not schedule afternoon classes due to the conflict with lacrosse, I managed to “shop” and consequently sign up for classes from 11-2 everyday. This optimized my sleep schedule while simultaneously allowing me to be on time to practice everyday. I got down the lockeroom around 2:30 or 3 o’clock everyday for 3:30 practice, except on days when we lifted before when I got there roughly an hour earlier. Practice typically ran between 2-3 hours with meetings preceding it and film following it on most days. After showering and dressing I usually got to the dining halls around 6:30, where I would eat with a vast majority of the lacrosse team for roughly an hour until I returned to my dorm around 7:45. I would usually feel such a feeling of accomplishment after working so hard that I would watch a movie and then do an hour of homework before going to sleep between 11 and 12 at night.
            When our game schedule began my schedule got even busier...