GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING, College Crosse Nation! Thanks for making us a part of your day! Here’s everything you need to know for March 19, 2019.

College Crosse News

It’s Aggregation time! Yesterday we released our Week 6 Top 20 Poll, as did USILA, Inside Lacrosse, & US Lacrosse Magazine. Below is a chart with the Week 6 Top 20 poll results from each of the national polls.

We have nine games on the docket today. Highlighted by Michigan vs. Notre Dame, Hobart vs. Colgate, & a trio of New England games between Harvard vs. BU, Holy Cross vs. Brown, & Providence vs. UMass Lowell. Decent set of games to break-up the work week. Directly below is the Big Board for March 19, 2019. As usual, clicking on the team name will take you to that team’s homepage, while clicking on the Stream/TV cell will take you to the broadcast of that game. Additionally, clicking the Live Stats cell will take you to the live stats of that particular game. All times Eastern Standard Time.

Check out Chris’ Team of the Week for Week 6!

#FreeBillyBoyd: High school BALLER has to sit on the bench because no sanctioned helmet fits him.

Billy Boyd finds himself sidelined at lacrosse practices, wishing he could play the game he loves. Injuries haven’t sidelined the ninth-grader. Nor have grades or penalties for some kind of rule infraction. Billy is sidelined because he can’t find a manufacturer that makes a helmet large enough to fit him. The Cape Henlopen (Lewes, Del.) freshman stands close to 6-2, weighs 230 pounds and has a head that measures 25 1/2 inches around. The average male head is 21 to 23 inches.

Marquette men’s lacrosse shows up to support women’s basketball team.

At 2 p.m. March 12, Marquette men’s lacrosse was in Pennsylvania taking down the Robert Morris Colonials, a team receiving votes in the Inside Lacrosse Top 20 poll.

At 7 p.m. that same day, the team was in Chicago supporting the Marquette women’s basketball team in the BIG EAST Championship.

“I looked at our flight itinerary and realized that we should be able to make the game,” head coach Joe Amplo said. “We were not going to miss an opportunity to be there for Coach Kieger and her team as they compete for a championship.”

It’s official: Syracuse announces venue change for the Duke game this weekend.

The Syracuse men’s lacrosse game vs. Duke on March 24 has been moved to Cicero-North Syracuse Stadium at Cicero-North Syracuse high school at 2 p.m., as the Carrier Dome will play host to the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament this weekend. In addition the Syracuse women’s lacrosse game on March 23 would be played at Alibrandi Stadium at Christian Brothers Academy in Syracuse, N.Y. “We’re extremely happy for Coach Q and his program to have the possibility to begin their quest for a national championship at home in the Dome that weekend,” said head coach John Desko. “Syracuse fans have proven time and time again to be the best in college lacrosse and I’m confident we’ll have a great home field advantage this weekend at CNS like we would in the Carrier Dome.”

Speaking of the Orange, make sure you read Chris’ breakdown of Syracuse’s game this weekend versus Rutgers.

For the second straight game, the Syracuse Orange started off slow against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. Rutgers scored the game’s first four goals and controlled most of the first half. But the Orange found ways to counter and fight their way back into the game. And yet again, Syracuse didn’t take their first lead of the day until the 6:48 mark of the fourth quarter en route to an 18-14 win over Rutgers. After RU’s initial 4-0 run, the Orange saw goals from Jamie Trimboli, Brendan Curry, and Nate Solomon to cut the Scarlet Knight lead to a goal. It continued to be a back and forth game until Rutgers quietly increased their lead back to four thanks to a 4-1 run.

Lacrosse is slowly making inroads into Idaho.

The South Hills Lacrosse team hosted their first home match of the year at their new field. South Hills represents high school girls mainly within Twin Falls county. They took on Helena, Montana and Idaho Falls at the BA Sports Field at Crossroads Point in Jerome. Lacrosse isn’t the most popular sport in Idaho and enthusiasts are hoping to change that. They say it’s a great sport for building endurance and timeliness, plus teamwork. The Helena team really showed its dominance and it proved in the final scores.

Here’s a nice story on Harvard women’s lacrosse player Shea Jenkins.

When Shea Jenkins is practicing with her Harvard women’s lacrosse teammates, she is sometimes taken aback. Not because she’s playing for the vaunted Crimson, but because she can actually see the ball. “I’ve had these little experiences where I say, ‘Wow, I saw that ball and I caught it. I was able to reach into the air when the ball was in the sun and catch it out of the draw,’” said Jenkins. What many of her teammates and competitors take for granted is something Jenkins does not. The freshman defender from Newburyport has full vision for the first time since birth, which is making her first college lacrosse season very special.

Temple women’s lacrosse is using Virtual Reality to improve their play on the field.

Temple University coach Bonnie Rosen wanted her players to improve their on-field peripheral vision, but that is extremely hard to teach, she said. She found a way to do so at the Intercollegiate Women’s Lacrosse Coaches Association’s annual meeting in November 2018. Rosen met a representative from NeuroTrainer, a company that offers virtual reality technology to improve athletic performance, and she quickly incorporated the equipment into her program. Players started using the VR equipment in Fall 2018. It has helped players train their peripheral vision and helped goalkeepers make saves. It’s a way to blend technology with coaching, Rosen said.

In the Hopkins portion of his Week 6 Top 20 post, Quint Kessenich dropped news that Hopkins & UVA won’t be playing each other in 2020. Tough beat, but I’m cool with it. That’s the price we play in the Conference Era of college lacrosse.

Meanwhile, we go on.

What’s Up, PhilaJersey?

YOU’RE WELCOME: New York City’s “best cookie” comes from Philly.

Non-Philadelphians tend to talk about Philly in terms of its relation to New York. They say that that it’s the “sixth borough” and write articles about the seemingly endless supply of expat Millennials with wildly disproportionate ideas about what makes rent “affordable” who are gradually taking over Fishtown. We mostly just ignore our overpriced sister city to the north and mind on our own business rather than engage with such microaggressions. With that said, we have to admit that it feels good to see none other than New York magazine name a Philly product on their Best of New York 2019 list.

World/National News

When you just wanna get away from it all: Remote Cape with ‘world’s cleanest air’ offers smog respite.

As much of Asia wheezes, coughs and sniffles its way through another smog season, one isolated and windswept corner of Australia is serving as the global standard for clean air. With panoramic views of swaying tussock grass and the vast crystalline expanse of the Southern Ocean, Tasmania’s beautiful Cape Grim peninsula is an unlikely reference point for the scientific world. But since 1976, this wild and blustery spot has been home to the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station -- a small Australian government facility with the seemingly eccentric task of bottling air.

Your GIF/Video for March 19, 2019

One small step for a pup. One giant leap for all pupkind.

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