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Erik Hewitt, Mercer Island Coach, kept a log of the
Spring Break trip to New York with the Mercer Island Varsity team. For all
of you that didn't do anything during your spring break, here is what they
did...
Well, after a long week of lacrosse we are home and back
to our own beds in Washington. Like most trips, we had our ups and downs for the trip.
All in all, we left New York with a feeling that
we achieved something this week. Not only were we the first
Washington team to beat a New York team, we also had East Coast lacrosse
people asking �Who is Mercer Island?�. We promoted our program not
only to lacrosse fans who have never even heard of Mercer Island (or
Lacrosse in Washington), but college coaches as well. Here is our Journal, well, my journal as an assistant coach and my perspective
of the trip.
Friday 4/8
After a long plane ride to Buffalo then a thirty minute
car ride to a little town called Springfield, we are finally settled in NY.
We headed over to a buffet dinner to get some food and talk about our
opponent for Saturday. I am from upstate New York, so I realize just how
tough this trip is going to be. Five games in eight days- not to mention
five games against five of some of the most respectable programs in the
state. I am nervous and I am not even playing! After a quick
dinner and a talk with a former Orchard Park player we realize our task at
hand is going to be one of our toughest all week. Orchard Park, for you who
don�t know, is continually ranked in the top 5 in NY. With the enormous
number of New York teams, this is a big deal. After dinner we head
back to the hotel and we have a little team meeting to go over their main
threats and call it lights out for the night.
Saturday 4/9
We woke up and went up to watch my former college team
Canisius College play Mount St. Mary�s from Maryland. Although Canisius lost it was good for the kids to watch a Division I game and
build excitement to play in our own game. We traveled the twenty minutes to
Orchard Park to go play our first game of the week. It didn�t go like we
planned, but I think the players realized this trip is wasn't going to be a walk in
the park. We thought, we will be ready for our next game. After a tough fought first
quarter, the score was tied at 1. We eventually lost 13-4. We had a
great time and found OP to be a great test. They have several players going
DI and they had one of the best defenses we have ever put our offense up
against. We realized in order to beat these NY teams, we have to play as
physical as the NY teams play. We would have play our best game ALL FOUR
quarters.
Sunday 4/10
Today is one of our few off days so we headed over to
see Niagara Falls. We had one player fly down to Augusta to see the masters
and we had another go make some college visits with his dad. We tried to
make this trip the best for every kid. After we saw the falls and toured
the area, we traveled to our hotel in Auburn, NY about two hours away from
Buffalo. Auburn is located right outside Syracuse and we will be here till
Wednesday.
Monday 4/11
Today we play Skaneateles. Since we don�t play them 'til 7
tonight, we all went bowling. After bowling, and the realization that we
should stick to lacrosse, we headed over to subway for lunch. I think I
speak for all of us when I say, "I don�t want to eat any more subway for a
long, long time." We played Skaneateles losing 10-5, but playing a lot
better than we did against OP. Skaneateles is a program known for
turning out some of the best D1 players every year. The stick skills on
this team were something every team should strive for. This team looked as
though each player had been on the wall every day of their entire life. We
headed back to the hotel after the game with a sense that we were getting
close to our goal of knocking off a NY team.
Tuesday 4/12
Wow, today was a long day. The day started off with a
two hour drive down to Corning East. We drove all these back roads and it
was a very scenic drive. I am from New York and I have never even traveled
these roads, so it was nice to see some of the state that even I haven�t
seen. We arrive at the stadium to play Corning East and their JV team is
practicing. They look like a varsity team and most of the players look like
they would start on most of our programs back west. We were all pretty
aware of the team we were up against and I was reassured when I looked at
their team program. They have had more college All-Americans than I could
even count. This program was making history and playing lacrosse before
most programs in NY and WA even had a team. We started of very slow,
hanging with them for the first quarter just like we did against OP. We fell
apart during the second and third quarters. By challenging the kids in the
fourth quarter and we held them scoreless and finished the game on 3 goal
run. We lost 12-6, but we knew our efforts would soon be rewarded. After
the game, we had two minutes to be back in the vans, rushing
back to Syracuse to watch SU play Cornell in the Carrier Dome. I was
excited to go and so was everyone else. Here we were, a west coast team
about to go watch the greatest college team in history at the Carrier Dome.
It was a great game with SU losing in the final minutes to Cornell 16-14.
It was a great experience for some of our players to see just how fast and
how good the players are at the top D1 level. This game was action packed
from the beginning to the end with Cornell and SU trading goals all the way
to the final minute where Cornell pulled ahead with two quick goals to seal
the deal.
Wednesday 4/13
A day off, YES!! Once again, we took a vote and decided
to give bowling a second chance. Yes, once again we were
still bad. Especially the two varsity coaches, who probably could have been
beaten by a girls team. We then headed down to Cortland to watch Cortland
ranked #3 in the nations top DIII schools. Their opponent, Oswego State, proved to be no contest
for the highly
competitive Cortland team losing 20-4. We then traveled to Albany again on
back roads checking out some the cool little towns in upstate NY. After
celebrating someone�s 18th birthday with a laugh, we
all headed to bed thinking about our game tomorrow and hoping to achieve our
goal of a win.
Thursday 4/14
Today we played Shaker and won! Shaker was Coach O�Hearn�s alma mater so it was one game we were really pumped up for. We
started off very slowly and found ourselves down 7-4 at halftime. We
challenged the kids at halftime and they answered with out hesitation. Ben
York, who had been fighting a bad knee all week, won every face off in the
second half. Our defense shut down the shaker offense, only allowing one
goal in the second half. Noah was big in goal stopping a couple of shots
with attacker�s right on the door step. Brant Howell shut down shakers' top
scorer all afternoon, while Adam Brazg and Ben Wickizer also played great
defense. They, in turn, allowed our offense to have the ball the majority of the second
half. Our offense stepped up leading the charge with Greg Mahony's five
goals. It was a great feeling for us as coaches- watching our kids to be part
of the first Washington lacrosse team to knock off a New York team.
The
coaches were excited because we knew we could win all along, finally
proving it to ourselves and anyone who doubted our trip. It was a great day
for us and for lacrosse in the state of Washington.
Friday and Saturday 4/15-4/16
Friday we had the day off and it we spent it touring
the city of Albany. We started the morning off with a brief practice to
get the blood pumping in the kids, and then we played lacrosse baseball. We
played baseball using our lacrosse sticks as bats, our gloves as gauntlets. It was fun,
when my team beat up on coach Pattison's team. We
then headed over to the New York State Museum, where some of the players
-won�t mention any names (Chris Taylor), thought the trip was a school
experience and we would later have a paper due on the exhibits. In
spite of that, it was
a fun day. Later that night, we attended a Professional Arena Football
game. The night ended on a good note with Noah and York showing their
affection for each other on the stadium television. Anyways, we played
Saturday against Guilderland
high school. We lost 10-8. We didn�t play our best game.
You think being tired and living in hotels for over a week might affect that
a little. I think it
was safe to say we were ready to head back to Seattle. It was a great
experience and we all had a blast. After the game we did a t-shirt swap
with the Guilderland team before heading
back to the hotel showers on west.
It was great trip with great results for our lacrosse
team. I would like to thank the parents who traveled with us on the
trip for all your hard work and organization. You truly made the trip
great.
STATS
In the 5 games, Kevin Mahony
had 9 goals and 9 assists, Greg Mahony had 7 goals and 1 assist, Ben York
had 6 goals and 2 assists, Chris Taylor had 4 goals and 5 assists, David
Sandman had 4 goals and 3 assists, Hank Bennett had 2 goals, and Jacob
Sonkin had a goal and 2 assists.
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