GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING, College Crosse Nation! Thanks for making us a part of your day! Here are your links for September 28, 2017.
What You Missed
“The Season” looks like it’ll be a sick series to watch this year.
The Virginia Cavaliers are partnering with a Native American lacrosse club for something different in their fall ball schedule.
Lacrosse The Nation
Some breaking news last night as the Syracuse Orange announced they will not participate in scrimmages with Team Israel and the Iroquois Nationals due to a mumps outbreak on campus, with one unidentified player confirmed getting it.
"After much discussion, and out of an abundance of caution, we've reached the hard decision to withdraw our team's participation in the lacrosse event this weekend," says John Wildhack, director of athletics. "We are disappointed our student-athletes won't be able to participate in Sunday's games. Ultimately, we prioritized the health of our student-athletes, our scrimmage opponent athletes, the Syracuse University student body, our community and beyond, when reaching this decision."
Since confirming the positive mumps diagnoses, and under the direction of the Office of Health Services, the University immediately activated its strong response protocol. This included isolating the potentially infected students, sanitizing all areas with which the students came in contact and notifying all people who may have interacted with the affected students.
As a part of the Orange team, it’s disappointing that we couldn’t participate. But the health and safety of the team and others is much more important than playing. The Orange kick off their fall ball schedule October 15 with their alumni game.
Fortunately, the Albany Great Danes are filling in as a last minute replacement, according to Syracuse.com. The school has yet to confirm as of publishing this post. We’ll get to see Tehoka Nanticoke in action for the first time as a college player.
If the Orange played on Sunday, there would be no 22 jersey out there. And we probably won’t see one for the near future, from Lindsay Kramer of Syracuse.com.
"I want the players to go and play and not deal with the 22 thing,'' Desko said earlier this week. "I think with 22, it's an honor to wear that number. But with it comes some pressure to perform.''
Desko would not rule out someone earning that number for the spring season. He said the issuing of the number was not brought up as an inducement during recruitment of the incoming class.
This is quality content right here:
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets lacrosse player Jake Hanson is being praised for his love for his girlfriend on Yahoo!
Their relationship actually began in part as long-distance, when Amanda [Smoltz] was traveling for the summer. “So what I did is I wrote her a letter for every single day she was gone, and on the envelope I would write the day and time she should open it,” explained Jake.
Some of his sweeter photo captions include, “She gets real excited over chocolate covered pretzels and it makes me laugh” and “Still haven’t caught my breath,” to describe photos of Amanda.
Hanson says the internet buzz has gotten him some new social media followers, but he’s not onboard with the idea of getting accolades just for being nice to his girlfriend.
“My overall sentiment toward the whole situation is kind of sadness,” he tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “In my personal opinion, those captions were not anything special, and nothing to go crazy over. Every girl deserves a guy that will post silly, cheesy captions about them; but more than that, every girl deserves someone that will love and guard their heart, and that’s something that I strive for every day.”
Sick buckets by the Towson Tigers:
So the new @ZimaGear decals came in for the @CascadeLacrosse S practice buckets and WOAH. pic.twitter.com/dwN917zx4I
— TU Men's Lacrosse (@Towson_MLAX) September 27, 2017
Face-off men are changing, pens Matt DaSilva of US Lacrosse Magazine:
[Greg] Gurenlian led the effort to redefine the position through The Faceoff Academy, which he co-founded with Chris Mattes in 2013. They emphasized athleticism, rather than gamesmanship, and in short time built an impressive roster of disciples who brought new respect to the position at all levels.
[Trevor] Baptiste, a senior at Denver who trained under Gurenlian, became the first faceoff specialist to be named a finalist for the Tewaaraton Award, the Heisman of college lacrosse. While leading the country with a 74.4-percent winning percentage, Baptiste also finished with 12 goals. He emerged as a threat to shoot or feed off the faceoff, traits he likely developed even more over the summer playing box lacrosse.
Faceoff men are no longer the rogue, out-of-shape weirdos. Just look at the U.S. training team roster. In addition to Gurenlian and Baptiste, there’s Brendan Fowler, who went from walk-on to NCAA championship MVP at Duke and doubled as a college wrestler, and Joe Nardella, a Harvard assistant who started the Faceoff Factory. Tom Kelly, meanwhile, trained independently after lasting just two semesters at Virginia. Now he’s one of the best faceoff guys in MLL.
Mini Mooch getting to respect on the Sacred Heart Pioneers!
Warrior Wednesday goes to Jimmy Gadaleta, Anthony Scaramucci, and the belt winner is Reed Avveduti #piopride #hardwork pic.twitter.com/cwGhWICCoZ
— SHU Men's Lacrosse (@SHUmenslax) September 27, 2017
Drexel’s still grinding!
today's practice was pic.twitter.com/VVxoarHTC0
— Drexel Men's Lax (@DrexelMLax) September 27, 2017
Add Johns Hopkins to the teams that are adding box lacrosse to their fall ball practices, writes Matt Hamilton of US Lacrosse Magazine:
This year, the Blue Jays kicked off the fall season with two hours of practice a week — one hour of individual installment of the offensive and defensive concepts and another at Du Burns Arena for box lacrosse. The box game has been picking up steam in the U.S., with players like Tom Schreiber and Kieran McArdle succeeding in the NLL (and former Hopkins great Paul Rabil joining the U.S. national box team). However, [Dave] Pietramala said he’s not worried about developing the next generation of American box stars.
“Our intent is selfish,” Pietramala said. “… [The box game] enjoyable. We’re finding that they are working hard. They are certainly being challenged physically and conditioning wise. It doesn’t feel like practice, yet we are developing certain skills that are really important to what we do offensively and defensively.”
Through the box lacrosse game, Johns Hopkins players are learning more about picking and defending the pick, as well as handling the ball in close spaces. Upperclassmen like Joel Tinney and Shack Stanwick pick up underclassmen and head across town each Monday for an unconventional fall practice.
“It’s not just giving in to drilling and coaching, where we’re standing around and learning,” Tinney, who grew up playing box lacrosse in Ontario, said. “You learn from doing. That’s one thing that our coaches have really adjusted to this year. … This is one of the more competitive first two weeks of fall ball that we’ve had since I’ve been here.”
New additions to the Bellarmine locker room:
@BellarmineLax The locker room is getting some new additions. More to come pic.twitter.com/2Fnj72C9hd
— Jay Sothoron (@CoachSothoron) September 21, 2017
STAND UP, GARDEN SPOT! The boys and girls lacrosse programs will now be funded by the school!
The Utah Utes announced their fall ball schedule, with scrimmages against Westminster, Scotland, and Marquette.
“Growing, learning, being intent towards our development as players and people and intensifying our relationships has been a constant theme this fall and so far so good,” said Utah head coach Brian Holman.
“We are excited for the new year and new team, our process will allow us all to grow and learn and develop both on and off the field,” said Holman. “Our scrimmages will present challenges to us physically and mentally and it will be so much fun to see how we handle those challenges and what knowledge is gained that will allow our program to keep moving forward.”
The Yale Bulldogs did the same:
Our 2017 Fall Schedule has been released: Oct 4th at 8:30pm vs Team Israel and Oct 8 at 11am vs Providence/ 3pm vs Colgate at Reese Stadium pic.twitter.com/xV8U7xdkSN
— Yale Lacrosse (@YaleLacrosse) September 27, 2017
The UMass Lowell River Hawks will take on Team Germany in their lone fall ball game on October 9.
LSN’s Josh Hawkins has three defensive midfielders he likes in the college game.
Gatorade and AwesomenessTV are partnering together for a six-episode series called Versus and will feature girls lacrosse players!
For this series, “Versus” focuses on two rival lacrosse players, Madison, played by Camille Hyde, and Lauren, played by Maddie McCormick, who are forced to play on the same team in a big summer tournament attended by major college prospects.
“Lacrosse for us was actually partially birthed out of the desire to be unexpected,” [Kenny] Mitchell said. “What we love about lacrosse is that it’s one of the fastest growing sports across the board.”
Throughout the series, the girls must learn how to confront their personal conflicts and come together for the love of the game.
“We like to tell authentic stories that really mean something to this audience and then we distribute these stories across a whole variety of platforms,” [Kelly] Day said. “With Versus, we are going to be distributing it through our partnership with Verizon’s go90.”
Get to know more freshmen!
Peter Rayhill!
— Drexel Men's Lax (@DrexelMLax) September 27, 2017
A midfielder from New York. Played for @millbrkmustangs! pic.twitter.com/Skuzb4FQfB
Final Friar Newcomer is hockey transfer #53 Jon Barry - Defense - Hanover, MA - South Shore (Northeastern U) #WelcomeToFriartown #GoFriars pic.twitter.com/3cfIhHLNM5
— Providence Lacrosse (@PCFriarsLax) September 27, 2017
Meet freshman M Austin Strazzulla (Vero Beach, Fla./Loomis Chaffee School) in this 2018 Newcomer Spotlight! https://t.co/i3eEXNxLEG #THWND pic.twitter.com/FJJnmnSpl5
— SJU Hawks Men's Lax (@SJUHawks_MLax) September 27, 2017
Football news, kind of. Vanderbilt plays Florida this week, but Commodores head coach Derek Mason says his daughter, Mackenzie Mason, will be cheering for Florida, where she goes to school and plays on their women’s lacrosse team as a freshman defender.
“She’s a Gator. She loves Dad, dearly, but when she signed to go to the University of Florida, that’s who she’s committed to, that’s the way her Dad raised her. I’m good with that,” Mason said Wednesday. “She just knows when she comes back to the house she better not have on any Gator gear.”
Philly Jawns
Bruce Willis was spotted in Rittenhouse Square.
World News
Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy, has passed away at the age of 91.
Video of the Day
An honest trailer of Star Trek: The Next Generation:
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