College Crosse Prospectus: Air Force beats Detroit Mercy; New Top 20

All the lacrosse news you can handle and plenty more!

By Chris Jastrzembski@Chris_Jast Mar 12, 2018, 9:25am EDT

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GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING, College Crosse Nation!! Thanks for making us a part of your day! Here are your links for March 11, 2018.

What You Missed

Begin your week with Dan Arestia’s weekend roundup with who looks good and who doesn’t.

Playing in Major League Lacrosse isn’t the easiest thing to do for most players.

What do Sean Monahan and Tyler Ennis have in common with lacrosse?

Lacrosse The Nation

As you could tell in yesterday’s Prospectus, we had a game yesterday. The Air Force Falcons knocked off the Detroit Mercy Titans, 9-7, for their second win of the season.

The Falcons went on a 4-0 run to take a 5-2 with 9:48 left in the second quarter before the Titans went on a 4-0 run of their own to take a one-goal lead midway through the third quarter. Junior attackman Cameron Carter scored two of his three goals on Air Force’s three-goal run that began late in the third quarter, including the eventual game-winner with 1:19 left in the game. Charlie Hayes made things interesting to cut the lead to one nine seconds later, before Nick Hruby scored an insurance goal with five seconds left. The senior also posted three tallies on the day.

Braden Host made 13 saves in a winning effort, but FOGO Trent Harper went 5-for-18 from the face-off X. The Falcons defense did stop Matthew Vangalen from reaching the score sheet on six shots, with Seth Mendell leading Titan scorers with two goals.

The Falcons are 2-4 and start SoCon play Saturday at home against VMI. The Titans are 2-5 and open MAAC play by hosting Marist on Saturday.

This week’s Media Poll has Albany as the unanimous #1 team in the country. Maryland, Duke, Notre Dame, and Denver follow.

Elsewhere, the Maryland Terrapins women’s team rolled past the Syracuse Orange in the Carrier Dome, 18-11.

One Tuesday game has already been postponed:

Tuesday's game between Bryant and Siena has been postponed due to impending snow. The two teams are working to find a makeup date.
— Bryant Lacrosse (@Bryant_MLax) March 12, 2018

Our good friends over at 18 Stripes recapped Notre Dame’s big win over the Denver Pioneers from Saturday.

Lafayette’s spending Spring Break in Cleveland! Can they do their city (Philadelphia) a favor and persuade LeBron James to come to the Sixers?

Thank you to everyone at the #ProFootballHallofFame for giving the boys a tour of the amazing facility this afternoon! Now we are off to #TheLand to take on Cleveland State Tuesday. #42strong #provepeoplewrong #Rollpards #Springbreak2018

A post shared by Lafayette Men's Lacrosse (@lafayettemlax) on Mar 11, 2018 at 1:30pm PDT

Terps head coach John Tillman thought his team was “super slow” in their loss to Albany on Saturday, notes Scott Gelman of The Diamondback:

“We’ll look back and see if it was something we did during the week or early today,” Tillman said. “At our best, we have the ball zinging around. We struggled to get into a flow.”

Albany entered the contest averaging close to 16 goals per game. But early on, the Great Danes were frustrated by the slow pace of the game, struggling to manufacture their typical offensive production. Attackmen Connor Fields and Tehoka Nanticoke, the Great Danes’ leading scorers, combined to score once in the first half.

”[The Terps] play a lot slower than we do, and sometimes we can get lulled into that mode,” Albany coach Scott Marr said. “We got lulled into not walking around fast. We said, ‘Pick up the pace.’”

Albany responded to its coach’s push while Maryland withered down the stretch.

The addition of current MLL pro John Haus to the Penn State Nittany Lions coaching staff has helped many of the current Nittany Lions, as Andrew Rubin of The Daily Collegian explains:

Attackman Grant Ament got to spend a lot of time working out with Haus one-on-one during the fall. Due to a class conflict with practice on some Mondays and Wednesdays, Ament couldn’t practice with the rest of the team.

He replaced that time by having a one-on-one practice with Haus. During those sessions, Ament got to learn a lot about and from his new coach.

“Obviously respecting coach [Jeff] Tambroni and all that he does, having a fresh set of eyes, I don’t know where he ended up, but beginning of the year he was top of the MLL in points,” Ament said before he went down injured. “So, obviously he knows what he’s doing. It’s very cool having a guy that’s playing on the national team… That’s one of those goals at the end of the day.

“You see what coach Haus does on the field. Like we hoot and holler when he warms up the goalies, like he can shoot the crap out of the ball. And it’s fun to watch.”

Our good friend of the blog (and former SU videographer) Evan Grossman for the New York Daily News wrote about how former Tufts player Dan Leventhal is using lacrosse in the Bronx to better the lives of kids on and off the field:

Bronx Lacrosse is more than just an after-school clinic where Leventhal teaches kids how to throw and catch. It’s a full-year program with a schedule of Middle School Athletic League games played at Randalls Island, some against more developed city programs. Through sponsorships, Bronx Lacrosse is also participating in weekend jamborees in Westchester and Connecticut against some of the best youth teams in the country.

“If you want to be a good lacrosse player, if you really want to experience the sport, you have to play against the best,” Leventhal said.

Leventhal’s players meet regularly all week for team practices, study halls and meetings. He said he is involved in their academic and home lives, and his program is strict and no-nonsense. It requires a commitment, and in exchange, students are given an opportunity to be part of a team.

“It became very apparent, just from when we first started, other teachers, the principal and administrators in our school were noticing a difference in some of the kids on my team,” Leventhal said. “They were showing up to class on time. They were showing up to school on time. Their grades were better, they were performing better on their exams, and lacrosse can be attributed to that. My principal’s a big supporter of this because it’s giving the kids another thing to work towards and they’re seeing results in the classroom.

“So that’s when I knew, when I saw those results, that this was something I wanted to make for real,” he said. “We want to empower these kids and give them something to work towards.”

Stoneman Douglas’ lacrosse teams are helping to heal their grief stricken community by continuing what they do and play lacrosse, in honor of those who were lost, as Matt Hamilton of US Lacrosse Magazine discovered:

“Our message is simple: We need to honor the victims, those who lost their lives, those who continue to fight for their lives, and those who witnessed such horrific acts that they have to learn to live with,” [Eileen] Pliske said. “We play to honor our friends at Douglas High School with every step we take on the lacrosse field.”

Pliske and her team brought gear to Pine Trails Park for Stoneman Douglas’ first practice, because many of the girls had left their equipment at school on Feb. 14.

[Seth] Lehrman pitched the idea for helmet decals to US Lacrosse Southeast Region Manager Lou Corsetti, who helped him get in touch with Ayser Deutsch at Lacrosse Specialties. Within 15 minutes, Deutsch had a design ready to be produced and offered 5,000 decals as a donation.

The following days, Deutsch drove all around South Florida distributing the decals, He entered a courtroom to hand some off to a judge whose son played for American Heritage-Plantation. He gave them out at his daughter’s high school game.

One player in Iowa is using the sport for good, from Allison Wong of KCRG in Iowa:

“I am donating based on my performance in the lacrosse game,” [Connor] Watson explained. “Every time our team wins I’ll donate $5; every time I start a game, I donate a dollar; every time I make a goal or get a shot on goal, I’ll donate $10, and for every ground ball I get in a game I’m donating 50 cents.”

All of that hard-earned cash will go to Compass to Care. It’s a nonprofit that covers transportation costs for families as they travel for their kids’ medical care.

Michelle Ernsdorff founded the nonprofit because her parents traveled to give her medical treatment as a baby.

”Insurance doesn’t cover tolls, parking, food, hotels,” Sandy Ernsdorff, Michelle Ernsdorff’s mother, said.

Connor Wilson of Lacrosse All Stars previews the 2018 FIL World Lacrosse Championships schedule, which begins July 11.