College Crosse Prospectus: Former Navy Player Makes One Final Visit To A Friend

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING, College Crosse Nation!! Thanks for making us a part of your day! Here are your links for December 30, 2017.

But First...

Since it’ll be my final go-around with the Prospectus for this calendar year, I wanted to say a few things before getting into today’s edition.

First, thank you to everyone that reads our posts, listens to our podcasts, follows us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and just supports us and the sport of lacrosse in general. It’s always refreshing to see that people care about the content we put out on a daily basis, and we hope we didn’t let you down too much!

Second, I wanted to reflect on the site as a whole. Even though I’m pushing out plenty of articles for you to read, especially now with out schedules, it’s an entire team effort. From Safe operating the College Crosse Twitter account, to Ryan producing and organizing our College Crossecasts, as well as Marisa, Adam, Jake, Hoya, Joe, and Doc, who all contributed to our site this year. Expect more of the same great content from most of them in 2018!

I also wanted to reflect on myself as a journalist. When I started at Marisa’s old site three years ago, In Lacrosse We Trust, it was a huge step for my career goals. I was writing about a sport I just recently fell in love with and I learned more about the collegiate game. I went to Championship Weekend for the first time as a writer, and started to develop habits that are still with me today.

This year was a little different. I did go to Championship Weekend again, and I did continue to do pregame videos before Syracuse lacrosse games like I did in 2016. I also had the opportunity, along with some of the team here, to talk to coaches such as Brian Holman of Utah, Randy Mearns of St. Bonaventure, Keegan Wilkinson of Marist, and the most frequent guest in College Crossecast history Dylan Sheridan of Cleveland State throughout the year. They were very happy to come on and talk about their lacrosse careers and chat about the sport. And all of them, as well as Jac Coyne from the MCLA, were appreciative of what we were doing to expand coverage of the sport we love.

I also was involved with breaking some news along the way, including transfers, an update on the Air Force program, and Kevin Conry going to Michigan, which was a journey in itself. There’s a ton of behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on with these stories that I won’t let go unnoticed.

I wanted to start doing something different that the lacrosse community hasn’t seen. That became the College Crosse Game Day shows, which I enjoyed preparing and doing, even though it was just myself, a Powerpoint presentation, my laptop, and a wall that I could write on. That was the first lacrosse show of it’s kind before the competitors started to do their own. The “studio” will be different in 2018, but I’m still working on how to make it better quality wise.

And that enthusiasm to create new ideas will continue in 2018. There’s going to be some great new content in 2018, and I’m about to embark on a big project myself that will once again be the first of its kind. We’ll continue with talking to coaches and others throughout the year.

Everyone here at College Crosse is different from the competitors because we have full-time jobs elsewhere. But despite the lack of resources and sometimes even time, I believe we’ve been putting out free and great content that matches and even exceeds others. I hope you stick around for the ride, because it’ll sure be a fun one!

Enough of that, let’s get down to business!

What You Missed

Make sure you listen to our College Crossecast 2017 Year in Review!

The Drexel Dragons may have a surprise up their sleeve for this upcoming season.

Lacrosse players are the most likely athletes to play multiple sports in high school.

Lacrosse The Nation

I said in the beginning that we love all our readers, listeners, and followers. And because of our dedication, we’re able to share stuff like this, from the man known as Dan Osborne, also known as 1987 Sucks on Twitter.

His son, Grayson Osborne, is seven and was diagnosed with a brain tumor just before his second birthday. He’s been fighting hard ever since, and was introduced to the Navy Midshipmen men’s team a couple years ago.

One player of importance is former FOGO Brady Dove, who was nominated last year for the Yeardley Reynolds Love (YRL) Unsung Hero Award because of his relationship with Grayson, as described in this Patriot League story:

Over the last two years, Dove has played an instrumental role in Navy’s collaboration with Team IMPACT and the family of six-year-old Grayson Osborne. Team IMPACT’s mission is to improve the quality of life for children facing life-threatening and chronic illnesses through the power of team. Established in 2011, Team IMPACT has already matched over 900 children with collegiate teams at over 400 institutions in 45 states, improving the quality of life of hundreds of courageous children and touching the lives of over 25,000 student-athletes.

Diagnosed with a brain tumor just before his second birthday, Osborne became an honorary member of the Navy lacrosse team two years ago. Making weekly appearances at practices, a bond was made between Dove and Osborne early on. A four-time All-Patriot League faceoff selection, Dove finds most of the day-to-day honing of his skills on the sidelines where the specialists match-up against one another. It also lends to more interaction with Osborne as he cheers on the team from the sideline and often helps coach up the specialists as a guest starter with his whistle in tow.

The relationship between Dove and Osborne has grown into an unbreakable bond that has witnessed countless acts of kindness on the part of Dove. Most recently, Dove laid the groundwork to extend a request to fellow collegiate FOGOs and team captains from the Naval Academy to create a video wishing Osborne a speedy recovery after he had fallen ill and was hospitalized. More than 15 players / teams responded with well wishes for Osborne, who is back home with his family.

“I hope Brady wins the YRL Unsung Hero Award ... but if he does not, the impact he has made will still last a lifetime,” said Dan Osborne, Grayson’s father. “He has changed the lives of our family. It means so much that our children have had a real life hero.”

Dove graduated this past spring, and is about to head off to BUDs SEALs training. But he wanted to say goodbye to his favorite pal before he went. And they celebrated by shaving each other’s heads:

Best of luck to Brady on his training. And I look forward to meeting Grayson when Navy visits Syracuse in April.

The Duke Blue Devils released their 2018 schedule yesterday!

Mark your calendars for February 16 for Denver-Duke! That’s gonna be a hot one!

We had two NLL games last night. The New England Black Wolves defeated the Vancouver Stealth, 13-9, and the Colorado Mammoth improved to 3-0 with an 11-7 win over the Calgary Roughnecks.

Two more games on the docket for tonight. The Buffalo Bandits are up north to take on the Toronto Rock, while the Rochester Knighthawks are in Georgia to take on the Swarm. The Knighthawks-Swarm game will be live on Twitter. There’s also this:

What position would Mike Golic Jr. have played?

The Peterborough Lakers were fined $500 after violating the Mann Cup broadcasting agreement with PlayFullScreen. The WLA also was angry over the Lakers cutting nets from the goals after their win, as well as the team taking home water bottles.

This was one of Cleveland State’s uniforms for last season:

If they don’t come back I will riot.

Matt Hamilton of US Lacrosse Magazine interviewed former Cornell Big Red stud Max Seibald on his busy summer, which included playing pro flag football:

HOW WAS THE AFFL LAUNCH GAME EXPERIENCE?

“I flew out to San Jose and I was there with some of those guys. I was the only non-football guy there, which was a unique experience. Most of the guys knew of each other. I don’t think anyone knew who I was. Most of them didn’t know what lacrosse was. It was a cool experience for me to just sit in the locker room next to Chad Ochocinco and Justin Forsett and across from Michael Vick. I was playing in the back with Nick Collins. I watched these guys play and to be on the same field as them and to communicate with them during a play and high-five them, and to also not feel out of place was a really cool experience. … The first day we had a scrimmage that wasn’t open to the public, but it was competitive because there was money on the line. When the real show happened on the following night, everyone was competing for the right to win. None of these guys lost their competitive edge. Some are still in incredible shape. There were multiple Hall of Famers on that field. This league is going to blow up and they are getting way more people involved. It’s going to be something special.”

WHAT DID YOU SAY TO YOUR TEAMMATES?

“So there were multiple conversations. First is the introduction, and some guys, based on the conversations that I had, just thought I played linebacker in college. They didn't know who I was and that was the rumor going around. Eventually, people heard that I was a lacrosse player and someone told me they overheard Terrell Owens, even on the filming of the game, it was televised, he was like ‘Let’s go against him. The lacrosse kid is covering me, throw me the ball.’ That type of banter. On the flip side, there were some guys that were intrigued by my story. They asked what my background was. I told them I played pro lacrosse. They said ‘Do you have any experience playing football?’ I said I played in high school. Sometimes I had to pump my own tires a bit and say ‘I won the Heisman of lacrosse.’ That actually got some respect from some of the other guys.”

DID ANY OF YOUR TEAMMTES HAVE A CONNECTION TO LACROSSE?

“Justin Forsett had an interest in lacrosse. He had a mutual friend. He actually knew Paul Rabil. He did Paul Rabil’s podcast and he went to college in Berkeley with one of my good friends. He came up to me and wanted to take a picture with me so he could send to his buddy. It was a weird feeling of having that happen. On the flip side, I’m going up to Vick and taking a picture with all the other guys. It was definitely a really quick experience and awesome experience.”

Two things. First off, Zach Currier is ripped. Second, ow.

Mitch Reames from SportTechie writes how a father and son have built a virtual reality tool for lacrosse goalies known as Virtual Goalie:

The program comes with an app that allows for customizable training packages. You can change the speed and which side the shot comes at or create fully custom drills that can allow the user to target a particular weakness, like bouncers.

“When I first switched to goalie, I wasn’t doing well on bounce shots,” Cody [Nelson] said. “After a week of using the training system, I could see the bouncers and predict where they were gonna go.”

After the shot, the app provides the user with feedback in a number of areas.

“Step towards the ball, drop on low shots, don’t punch with your top hand and let the ball rebound,” Doug [Nelson] explained. “You look at all that data, and it tells you how your actions impacted your save percentage.”

RICKY BEAST!

Philly Jawns

The Philadelphia Eagles might activate Sidney Jones for Sunday’s game against the Dallas Cowboys. They needed a roster space for that to happen. It may have happened:

World News

Some South Carolina lottery players could be making money! An error might lead to $19.6 million in winnings.

Video of the Day

Speaking of 2 Chainz, here he is trying some of the most expensive things out (language might not be best for our younger audience!):

That’s it for today!! I’ll see you out there!! Make sure you follow us on social media!

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Managing Editors: Safe Fekadu, Chris Jastrzembski, Ryan McDonnell