College Crosse Prospectus: More Freshmen Moving In

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING, College Crosse Nation!! Thanks for making us a part of your day! Here are your links for August 23, 2017.

What You Missed

Luxembourg is the newest nation to join the Federation of International Lacrosse.

Lacrosse The Nation

The freshmen are coming!

Harvard and Lehigh have released their full incoming classes, as well as the Duke women.

Team meetings and workouts have begun as well!

Virginia Cavaliers defenseman commit Hall Peters will delay his college career by a year, as he informed the coaching staff he’ll take a gap year this season, according to Terry Foy of Inside Lacrosse.

Marisa’s got a great profile on Rochester FOGO Drew Simoneau in the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Simoneau is planning to return to the Rattlers next season for his third year as a pro. He runs a clinic in Rochester, and plans to be involved in the sport in that capacity while also working on his career as a physical therapist.

“We finished the season super strong,” he said. “Four awesome team wins to get us into the playoffs. Our NLL guys coming back with (Jordan) McIntosh, (Joel) White and (John) Ranagan from the (Georgia) Swarm bumped us up. Started out rocky but things started to click towards the end.”

There has been speculation about the future of the Rattlers, but after a strong turnout at the end of the season, and a late postseason push, Simoneau is expecting a return to upstate New York.

“Preparing to be in Rochester, I’m hopeful we’ll stay there,” he said. “We had 3,500 fans show up last game. The fans are there; we need them to show up. I’m hopeful we get to stay. Being the team we are, we love each other, would be a shame to see them dissipate. I’m excited to continue my career, staying with Rochester.”

Brevin Fleischer from The Daily Pennsylvanian spoke to Ohio Machine champion and former Penn Quakers defenseman Matt McMahon.

DP: I was actually just about to ask you how your experiences at Penn and with coach [Mike] Murphy prepared you for that level, so I’ll instead shift to asking you how your experiences at Penn helped prepare you for post-college life in general, beyond the field.

MM: Coach Murphy tells the recruits, the alumni, and the players that he’s trying to prepare you not only to be the best lacrosse player you can be but also to be the best young man that you can be. I think that his lessons have definitely been felt in my day-to-day. Even looking at what my former teammates have done these past couple of years, I think that everybody goes about their lives with a really strong foundation. He really set us all up with a set of skills that make success all but inevitable for a lot of us, and that should come as no surprise because he’s a terrific mentor and a great leader of young men. I definitely owe a lot of my success to him, and I know that my teammates feel the same way.

DP: Sticking with the Penn program, do you still follow the team closely? If so, would you share some thoughts you had about last year’s performance?

MM: Absolutely. The program is definitely one of the things the alumni care about a ton. We find ourselves getting together in the spring to watch a lot of the games on TV. We all monitor the program very closely. Actually, speaking of which, I had the opportunity to spend some time with rising junior attackman Simon Mathias this summer, as he worked with us a bit, which was terrific. It’s always great to spend some time with these guys in the program. We get to see that they’re the same high-quality individuals as my teammates were. It’s all just a function of the program that coach Murphy has put together. I think they’re poised to have an excellent season this year. I think that the have some tremendous leaders coming up. In particular, Kevin McGeary and Simon Mathias are two of the best players in the Ivy League. I think that they’re really setting themselves up for a big season this year. You’ll definitely see a lot of their hard work pay off, so I’m pretty optimistic about this year for Penn.

New Boston University Terriers assistant coach Max Silberlicht wrote about his experiences coaching the Latvian National Team for BU’s website.

I became involved with the Latvians in 2011 when I organized and led an US-based club team to play in Jelgava, Latvia, against the Latvian National Team and the Polish National Team. Ever since, I have been involved with the program as an assistant coach, helping develop the sport in the country and preparing the team for each international competition. I have traveled to Latvia during August of the years there were no championships to be the curriculum director for a national team development camp (2012, 2013, 2015 and 2017). During summers with either a European Championship or World Championship, I have acted as an assistant coach to Paul Dzintars Kalnins, who has been the head coach since the program's inception. Paul, a fellow Hobart alum, has been gracious enough to make my every interaction with the lacrosse program a great one. But it was the lacrosse players of Latvia that have made and continue to make my involvement special and extremely rewarding.

My first international tournament experience with the program was at the 2014 World Championship in Denver. Latvia finished 19th (out of 39) coming up one goal short against Wales for an opportunity to play in the 17th place game. This was the highest finish the program had ever achieved. Statistically, the team also set new records, scoring the second most goals in the entire tournament as well as having the tournament's leading assist man wearing the Latvian Red and White.

In 2016, the team traveled to Budapest to compete in the European Championship and was placed in the toughest group with European powers England and Germany. In one of the best games of the tournament, Latvia lost to England, the eventual gold medal winners, 11-9. The previous meeting of England and Latvia was a 26-4 loss for the Latvians in Finland in 2008. Although it was the same outcome in 2016, it was a significant result for the players and the team that solidified the country's standing in the European lacrosse community. The team finished ninth in the tournament (due to Germany and England advancing out of the group), but was arguably the fourth-best team at the event.

People know who the Latvians are because of their fast-paced, passionate, and most of all, aggressive and physical play between the lines. It has been a pleasure to work with these men for six years and to watch them continue to develop. They play the game for the purest of reasons; not to be recruited to a school with the highest rank in the Princeton Review, but because they are passionate about lacrosse, each other and wearing the colors for their homeland of Latvia.

WMAR in Baltimore did a feature on the upcoming closure of PJ’s Pub in Baltimore, a mainstay for Johns Hopkins fans.

In Upstate New York, former Cazenovia assistant Dave Falge has been promoted to head coach as the high school, according to Nolan Weidner of Syracuse.com.

Artis Gilmore is a lacrosse player.

Women’s news: A WPLL team already has a new coach and the league hasn’t even held their draft yet, which is later tonight:

Gear alert!

Philly Jawns

33 people were hurt in a SEPTA train crash early yesterday morning.

World News

Tonight’s Powerball drawing is up to $700 million!

Video of the Day

Did the overrated solar eclipse ruin your vision? Not sure? Here’s how to tell:

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