St. Mary's Lax Book

Matt Hogan

2003-2010 on Saturday a number of games were to be played at Texas Stadium. We flew to Dallas after school on Thursday and arrived late Thursday evening. Parents of a local school, Highland Park, met us at the hotel and provided our team with pizza and drinks. We played Friday afternoon at Highland Park in a good game vs. a very athletic team and won the game. We did not play particularly well. I remember winning but not being very happy at how we played. We were scheduled to play Episcopal School of Dallas Saturday morning at 9am in Texas Stadium. We were assigned the Cowboys locker room. The bus pulled under the stadium and let the team out. It was a great experience for the players. Many of our guys wore Redskin jerseys out to warm up in. We played well in the first half and were winning, but the coaches were encouraging the players to play better. The players played extremely well in the third quarter and dominated play and we were able to play all of our players in Texas Stadium. The next year we traveled again to Texas and played two games on Friday and a game early Saturday morning. It was a lot of lacrosse in a short period of time. After our morning game, we showered and sat in the stands watching Notre Dame vs. Bucknell. I recall looking at our players in the stands during the second quarter and just about all of them were sound asleep in the stands. Practice on the Day of Graduation In 2003, we had the MIAA Championship the day after graduation. My thought was, and the coaches supported it, was to practice after graduation: “We had to practice the day before the game.” We e-mailed our parents to see if it was better for us to practice immediately after graduation or that evening. All but a few asked that we practice right after graduation. Those that wanted us to practice in the evening were excused from coming to practice. There were grandparents and other family members that could only attend lunch and would not be around for dinner. We held practice right after graduation in the rain at St. John’s College along the creek. Everyone came to practice. I asked one of the players we excused, “Why are you here?” His response was classic, “Coach, I wouldn’t miss this for anything.” It was a very spirited and productive practice. We played in Raven’s Stadium, Navy Marine Corp Stadium, Texas Stadium, and SMU Stadium. My Time Here: In the brief time I was coach we experienced some real changes in particular to fields and games. We practiced at St. John’s College my first year. The players were to run to practice from school and walk back after practice. I am not sure how many actually ran to practice. There were one and a half fields and we had to coordinate the three teams’ use of those fields. There were times one team was running off the full field to allow another team access to the full field. It took a lot of coordination and patience with the coaches. However, we never had a practice cancelled due to weather because St. John’s allowed us to practice in all weather. At the end of that season, St. John’s started construction and we were not permitted to use their fields. We had some tremendous players in 2003. Our entire line-up was 6’ tall or more and very athletic. Our starting defense and long poles went to: Navy (3), Syracuse, Maryland, and Johns Hopkins. Our first midfield went to Lehigh, Maryland, and Johns Hopkins while our attack (1 senior and 2 sophomores) went to Dartmouth, Towson, and Cornell. Our goalie played at Maryland. Our team captains were Eric Zerrlaut and Nick Bonacci. We then practiced at Old Bates in 2004. We had a man hole cover in the middle of one field,

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